Temporary Digression (of the Spotted Kind)

Visualize Consistency

2009-07-11T12:34:00.000Z

One fine more-than-halfway-through-our-vacation day, Little Girl went off with her grandma to play Jarts between the sagebrush—lawn darts having evolved from the pointy-tipped implements of doom that they were back in my misspent youth to the point where they had become suitable for members of my family—and I grimly set out to attempt to meditate.

I had purchased four guided meditations for 99 cents each—a neatly disposable sum, one which I should not have to feel extensive guilt for, should the meditations turn out to be less than useful (or, perchance, not used at all due to my stubborn procrastinatorial nature)—and had duly carted them along on our personal holiday, but I still resisted actually listening to them.

It's just not as much fun as heavy metal, you know?

Anyway, as the Jart game progressed into strategic alteration of the existing—and thoroughly complicated, it seemed—rules, and I sat stewing over the hard lump of writer's block coal that had somehow wound up in my sock that morning, it seemed as good a time as any to bite the meditation bullet.

I set aside my writing implements, plugged my headphones into my ears, selected the shortest meditation in my well-traveled options (about 12 minutes), sighed, and pushed "Play".

The speaker in this particular selection was a male, and had a lovely bit of accent—Australian, I believe—which was, if not precisely soothing, at least not unpleasant. I listened, popped my eyes back open when the Aussie's lilting instructions revealed I was not yet supposed to close them, and thereafter tried to follow the instructions I was being given—and only those instructions.

Things went along fairly well for a bit. I was, I was told, walking in a richly-colored autum forest. Visualizing this scene presented only a modest problem, for the "bright colors" bit wasn't mentioned just at first, so when it did come into play, I had to drag my mind's eye self right out of the forest of Wyoming pines I had been walking in and instead drop my imaginary ass into a deciduous forest of undetermined location instead.

Awk-ward!

Once the canopy above was composed of the proper species of woody forest denizens for the guided imagery du jour, I was surprised to realize, at some indeterminant point, that I really was relaxing, somewhat, into the scene. Of course, upon reaching such conclusion, I was pulling back from involvement to make my observation, so when I realized THAT, I struggled to reimmerse myself into the exercise.

That, however, is when it all went to hell.

Oh, the scene-setting continued with luscious peacefulness—that wasn't the issue. What happened was that my mellow Australian guide who, despite his uncomfortable, pausing, phrasings (reminiscent of the original James T. Kirk), really was doing a lovely job of crafting a relaxing "walk in the forest", took me from my stroll amongst AUTUMN foliage right out into a clearing "full of flowers".

Wildflowers, as you may or may not be aware, tend to bloom in profuse abundance in SPRING, not fall.

Arrested from my virtual stroll so profoundly that my eyes—now closed, as directed—popped open with the shock of toast being sprung from the cells of its heated creation. A field of flowers? In fall? WTF? My oblivious Aussie guide continued ... haltingly ... along, and I shut my eyes and struggled to find myself in the seasonally-inconsistent scene, in which I was now supposed to be taking off my shoes and socks to cool my heels in the stream.

Shoes and socks? I thought I was barefoot? But why would I be walking through a FOREST barefooted? That wasn't in the instructions ... OH MY GOSH, I'M AS BAD AS HE IS!

Needless to say—at least for those familiar with the wandering, failed reasoning that is typical of my lost, flailing mind—I was not well-involved in the scene after that. I would wonder if there were fish in the stream, and if so, what kind, and then try to get back into it. And why, I thought at some point as my guide droned on about the stream, were wildflowers even mentioned? How could I see them, lying back on the rock, and how was this supposed to be comfortable?

Screw this. MY rock has moss all over it. Although, it wouldn't have moss if it were in full sun, so that means there must be a tree nearby, and there can't be trees, because I'M NOT IN THE AUTUMN FOREST ANYMORE ... I'M IN SPRING FLOWERS NOW.

I do believe it was the longest 12 minutes I've ever spent in either forest or flowers, and when it finally ended—with a smoothly-delivered reminder to to return to the calming forest daily, if not more often—I was only too glad to exit completely.

Because I'd been mostly out of the "relaxing" scene for the bulk of the allotted visiting time anyway.

My other three meditations are from different sources, so I can only hope they will be set in different scenes. I will miss the lilting accent of my slow-speaking, seasonally-challenged meditation guide, but should I be so fortunate as to find myself in a logically compatible setup during my next meditation challenge, I'm sure it will only be to the benefit of my racing mind.

Clearly, I cannot stop for inconsistency.

Take These Verbs and Use 'Em

2009-07-05T22:34:00.001Z

One thing I can say about the assignments we're now receiving in my women's writing group is that they're certainly not rote—they're more like Forest Gump's proverbial box of chocolates, except that the writing assignments are more likely to generate indigestion.

Not that I'm trying to compare writing to an ailment of the digestive tract; not exactly, anyway! But the comparative ease of writing, stacked up against downing assorted chocolates—even those heinous, fruit-flavored creme ones—is rather dramatically different. In fact, I tend more to agree with Red Smith, who, while he did refer to writing as "easy", then went on to clarify that it was equivalent to opening a vein.

I've always taken this to mean that writing is like slitting one's wrists, although I suppose that might be seen as a wee bit extremist.

But back to the latest assignment—although, technically speaking, it's not THE latest. As I sit here, on my bunk bed in my parents' Internet-unavailable Wyoming cabin, I have no access to the most recent writing assignment, which would have been issued two days ago. In my happy isolation, I am still working on the LAST most recent writing assignment, in which I was told to write, with as many words as the years I had thus far lived, a succinct summary of my life.

Which sounds tricky enough, but fully HALF of those words were to be verbs, and all of those words were to be extraordinary.

By way of comparison, take a look at the most commonly used words, and you are going to be very bored indeed; these words are not only common, but they are also tiresome to the rounded nubbin of dismal. We lack variety, we lack complexity, and in both of these, we also lack specificity. With so many splendid and detailed words available, we as writers should be appalled, and we probably would be, but who has the time?

As I discovered, when I tried to think of words I don't use, it's hard enough to be creative without an enhanced vernacular as the agenda du jour, but when you pair the two, whatever mental constipation you're currently combating will congeal into a worst-case-scenario that all the artistic fiber in the world can't shift.

In other words, it's hard to write without using the words you typically use.

After I thought about it some more, I considered the possibility that I might, per usual, be reading too much into the exercise. This revelation, combined with the fact that none of my fellow writing group writers are going to see the results of my mentally-blocked efforts—unless they join you, the typically-silent dozen or so daily readers that stalk my blog like corn (that would be ACTUAL corn stalks, not children of the corn, who, if I remember the spooktacular tale correctly from reading it in my misspent teenage years, did a thoroughly admirable job of stalking ... not that it's relevant here in the slightest)—finally led to freeing me to at least complete the exercise, with one small twist.

I decided not to try to summarize my life in 40 atypical words (at least half of them unusual verbs), but instead, my writing life.

Here it is:

adduce

vie

grapple

concede

embellish

laud

amalgamate

equalize

accrue

contravene

persist

scrutinize

aver

percolate

transpose

extrude

enliven

circumvent

denote

abstain

sanctify

elucidate

contemplate

venerate

bamboozle

cogitate

agglutinate

eschew

congregate

adumbrate

simulate

emend

scrawl

gibber

recollect

delineate

endeavor

blather, immerse, recur

Please note: They're ALL verbs! And if you stretch your imagination and stand on your head, they're even all relevant. ;)

When Music Speaks

2009-07-02T01:01:00.000Z

One of my most cherished Wyoming vacation traditions—two years in practice now—is the acquisition of new music for the journey. While I tried to be mature and considerate in my selections this year, purchasing several guided meditations that I have yet to listen to even in part, what I really wanted—and what I got in spades—was new metal.

Surprise, surprise.

It so happens that I've been so distracted by my assorted and sundry stress-induced health ailments—thanks, Corporate, you heartless bitch—that I had no idea whatsoever that Dream Theater was putting out a new album, timing its release to absolute perfection by selecting the very day that I am doomed to return to my desk job from the sanctified alpine vistas of Wyoming.

You know when I discovered that, I had to have me that first release off of the new album for my travels!

I have a fairly long fixation on Dream Theater, though I've not yet managed to see them in concert. I believe the album of theirs which I first purchased was the mainstream offering, Images and Words; this, for those of you imaginary souls who may be tragically uninitiated to the delicious world of alternative metal and yet are still trudging along through this scary forest of obsessive/compulsive metal veneration, is the album that spawned the "Pull Me Under" single.

From that modest beginning, I rapidly collected more Dream Theater albums, though I was at a loss to explain the appeal until I noticed, at a Rush concert, a significant number of attendees sporting Dream Theater shirts. Upon returning home and exercising my right to Google, I read a number of analyses that smartly compared Rush and Dream Theater, with their tendency to switch key and alternate beat, explaining that the two bands shared a tenacious appeal to the attention-deficit-disordered.

Basically, the suggestion was that there is so much contained with Rush and Dream Theater songs, that people who might otherwise be bored with music, cannot become so—making them supermagnetically attracted to the two bands. Between the two, of course, Dream Theater has a heavier edge, but the similarities are nevertheless many.

Anyway, while I am not at all the sort of person who holds court on musical discussion boards—being that I tend to slouch down in the corner with the rest of the slovenly and "musically illiterate", despite the fact that I am very vocal in my personal musical preferences ... I simply cannot defend them in terms utilized by the musical elite—I am nevertheless a fairly rabid Dream Theater fan. To me, their lyrics provoke thought, their melodies incite chills, and their stylings demand repeated play—all of which I am deliriously pleased to provide.

There will be argument and debate, of course—there always is, even amongst the most devoted of fans—regarding the quality and innovativeness of Dream Theater's newest production. However, regardless of whether the experts or the laymen or the random listener concur on the merits (or lack thereof) of this latest effort from Dream Theater, I've already made my assessment of the first fledged track. I have all I need to know in what I've read into the lyrics and what I've extracted from the surging trills and crescendoing plunges, and I like it. I like it rather a lot, particularly when the refrain speaks to me so abundantly and appropriately:

Turn the key
walk through the gate
The great ascent
to reach a higher state
A rite of passage

The final stage
a sacred home
Unlock the door
and lay the cornerstone
A rite of passage

There's some sort of of cliché about how you find what you're looking for ... I believe it's made out to be a bad thing, and certainly it can be. But in regards to something as personal as music, if you find what you're looking for, then you've done a damn fine job as a seeker. And part of the beauty of music is that there is so much more to it than its simple literal and tonal speech—music also has in it what you bring to it.

So bring a lot, my invisible friends ... and bring it often.

I Remember Now

2009-06-29T11:05:00.001Z

We are back in Wyoming, for a too-limited time, but back, nevertheless. The air is as fresh and eminently breathable as I recall, and the spaces are as vast and freeing. Through the restricted miracle of a laptop computer—recharged by batteries powered by solar cells—I am able to blog, though due to the remoteness of our location, I will not be able to post my rantings until we've returned to the Internet-connected world at large, about a week from the time I write this.

On the last portion of our travels, which brought us to the sanctity of our home away from home (and away from pretty much everything else), we were conveyed by a neighboring rancher's Range Rover. This generosity saved us a lengthy hike, which we made a few days later just for fun (and it is all the more fun when you are not weighted down with the gear required for a week in isolation).

During the unexpectedly quick, final part of our journey, I overheard the rancher's wife telling the story of some native Wyoming son, away during the Vietnam War, and how his parents sent him a package to ease his homesickness. The scent of sagebrush, crushed under the wheels of the Range Rover, reminded her of this, as it was sagebrush that the soldier received.

And I inhaled to the point of inebriation the scent as I listened to the tale. I remembered collecting snips of sagebrush myself, when we moved from Wyoming to that other place, and I remembered my parents bringing it back to me in subsequent years, when they traveled to Wyoming but I could not.

I expect it's not something most people would find soothing, but I knew how it must have made that soldier feel. It was an odd reassurance, to be so connected to so small a thing as the smell of a tenacious, wiry plant, but it is there as sure as air in my lungs and blood in my veins—though not born to it, I am still a Wyomingite myself ... an adopted child of my chosen homeland. Inextricably, it is there to come back to; inexplicably, it is never far away—even when it is.

I remember now.

Mind v. Matter

2009-06-26T01:06:00.001Z

It recently occurred to me that I have never considered my "self" to be my physical self. I don't mean that I don't consider my physical being to be all of me—because of course it is not, although I am undecided as to whether the mental/emotional/whateveral rest of me qualifies as what some term a "soul", or whether it is a more benign, amorphous mess generated by various biological processes and held together with the tenuous connections forged by personal memory—but rather, I mean that I do not consider my physical self part of ME at all.

On the surface, this is a totally irrational position to take; clearly, the physical framework within which we all operate as human beings is a large part of who we are and what we become. We may exist as "spiritual"—for lack of a better word—beings, but even if some of us may claim to have experienced multiple trips to this terrestrial existence, I do not know of anyone who has claimed to be able to recall existence entirely outside of the physical realm.

If, indeed, there is such a thing at all.

While I accept that my feeling that my body is not part of "me"—though I do accept that it's my property for the duration of my lifespan—is a ridiculous one, I still can't escape the notion. If, for example, someone compliments my appearance, I do not take it as a credit to me. This is above and beyond whether I feel the compliment is valid—I really do not feel that my face or my body are components of my whole "self" ... my physical person to me, is more or less an illusion—a fable of a thing that, while not precisely a prison, is still so sadly restricting that it tips the blessing/burden scales quite distinctly down on the side of being a trial.

In this way, I think, I identify with some of the early Gnostic ideas that the physical realm is a necessarily evil one. It's not that I'm so closely sympathsizing that I could make the transition to conversion—not by any stretch of the Gumby personna of imagination—but I do relate in the basic notion that the physical and the "spiritual" are essentially disconnected entities, and the spiritual one is the "good" and real of the two. I do not find the idea that the material realm is a confinement, of sorts, to be extreme, or uncomfortable.

Because of this underlying (if irrational) conviction, I am finding myself at increasingly distressing odds with my shrink, who seems to be of opposing sentiments, and is increasingly encouraging me to become more in touch with my physical body—yes, yes, let's get the adolescent snickering out of the way on that phrasing right now—and to connect with it via meditation. I've been putting this off for so long now that it's fairly routine, but I do think the reason for my evasion has less to do with my general tendency towards procrastination and a lot more to do with my feeling that the material world is scraping the sub-basement of idealism ... in short, my physical body is not something of which I wish to have an increased and in depth awareness.

Sure, there are physical pleasures to be had, and it's tatamount to insanity to wish to be removed from what happiness the material realm holds. But there's also a full-black rainbow of physical discomforts out there, and the idea of increasing my sensitivity to and acknowledgment of the gamut of ickiness that runs from mildly irritating menstrual cramps to near-completely debilitating migraines—even if I could possibly catch such attacks in earlier stages—quite simply revolts me. And that doesn't even touch on the truly horrific opportunities for material hell that reside in "this world": illnesses that kill instead of merely discomfort, and worse, ones that make death seem like a blessing.

Anyway, having established what's holding me back and loosely chained it to an historical theology that I find fascinating—albeit abstractly so—where do I go from this walled-off dead-end street? That's hard to say. I haven't gone anywhere yet, though I am getting damn sick of staring at the bricks in front of me. I've packed a number of guided meditations with me on a variety of portable devices—my mp3 player, this sweet little Dell Mini, and even my cellphone—and yet I still continue to avoid even attempting to try to meditate my way into a new relationship with the physical "me" I've so long denied.

Gnosticism, for all of its independent flavors—mostly lost to history—is centered on knowledge. It occurred to me, though, when I made the connection between the disdain I've felt for my physical self for at least a quarter of a century and these long-lost spiritual philosophies, that to avoid knowledge is to desecrate that "spiritual" self which I do identify with and hold as truly "me". And that means that even if it is hideously uncomfortable—or merely just awkward and weird—I need to advance my ideas and make new connections.

And maybe I do need to start seeing myself in the duality of the non-physical and the physical ... even if the non-physical is clearly the superior part. Especially considering that, given that I do not consider my physical self "me", I seem to have forgotten or neglected to realize at all that all of the trials and tribulations that the material world presents cannot—if I do not permit them—touch the part of myself that I consider my true "self". Perhaps what improvement of the tenuous connection between the immaterial and the material can actually strengthen both components.

It's an interesting idea, I guess. But only time will tell if this particular odd notion will prove stronger than my ability to put off meditating entirely!

Every Last Word

2009-06-22T13:33:00.001Z

A momentous thing has occurred, dear Internet! Well, perhaps not so much "momentous" as "ludicrous", or perhaps "irrational", but regardless of the exact classification of said THING, it was a precious moment in my Internet life—very precious indeed!

(Not quite as precious as when I managed to elicit a rare and treasured comment from The ListMaker, mind you, but it was still special. But on with the story, lest you never discover what "it" was, or lose all interest in even trying.)

I've long made occasional, random mention of my unorthodox "Bike-n-Blog" apparatus—a shockingly heavy Toshiba "Satellite Pro" laptop with an external, 3.5" floppy disk drive, running Windows 95 atop a Professional Engineer custom-crafted desk, under which sits an archaic 10-speed bike that no longer shifts quite right but runs nicely in one high gear, fitted into a very nice Blackburn TrakStand—at which I do pretty much all of my blog writing. Of late, I have also made rising-frequency something of the increasingly uncooperative "R" key of said Toshiba laptop.

Now, while what I've said with respect to this setup might certainly be taken for "whining"—in particular, regarding the near-constant backspacing necessitated by the rrrrrrrecalcitrant "R" key—I really do like my non-standard blogging situation. I like that I'm getting a fairly respectable workout while I write, I like that I'm doing it on hand-me-down (aka, recycled) and hand-built (aka, creative) materials, and even though I'm enough of a geek to long for the latest and greatest in high-tech gadgetry, I like that I'm not beholden to it, or hampered by lack of it.

(In short, I like the illusion of adaptability, which is what my "Bike-n-Blog" workspace provides me as a bonus to the ability to maintain some semblance of fitness while I tickle the alpha-numeric keyboard to my wee heart's content.)

But I'll also freely admit that the "R" key conniptions were making writing unusually trying, and as any writer can tell you, writing is generally difficult enough that additional "challenges" are really most unwelcome. I certainly could have endeavored to crack open the Toshiba—unencumbered by an operating manual—and attempted to repair its stickiness, and I did try the less-invasive procedure of evicting years of dust-bunny accumulation and a few chunkier particulates from the immediate vicinity of the "R" key with strategic blasts of canned air, but that changed the key's stubborn-teenager behavior not a whit.

I'm fairly decent with computers in that I am not afraid to experiment with them, trying new menu options and even the occasional registry tinkering with only a modicum or so of cringing. However, when it comes to gutting the beasts and working with their fragile, electro-delicate innards, I really would rather never go there. Ever. Like, in a bazillion years or so! Particularly when, as I realized one day when looking for an old entry on my new-ish, Internet-ready desktop computer, there was no where in the world—save the Internet itself—that the entirety of my blog was stored EXCEPT for that ancient, "R"-irritable Toshiba laptop, snuggled cozily over my bicycle, right next to my lonely weight bench.

(You can see why I refrained from attacking the underbelly of the "R" key now, can't you?)

Yes, somehow, in the transfer of files from one desktop computer to another, I managed to NOT carryover the years of text files that have translated into so much Internet light pollution, and while I understand that at least half the world goes merrily along with less than half of its files backed up, I've been the victim of two hard-drive failures and numerous minor incidents that leave me almost rabid with back-up fever. And although I do suffer from back-up constipation—you know, no regularity to speak of—it's extremely rare that I have NO BACK-UP AT ALL, and because I had been operating under the delusion that my desktop computer contained all of the same files as the trusty old Toshiba—"R" key notwithstanding—it was quite a shock to discover that I was actually 399 files short of a full blog back-up.

The process of transferring data from the Bike-n-Blog computer to my desktop is harrowing enough, involving as it does the archaic 3.5" floppy disk so rightfully mocked by Jeff at Side Salad in this here entertaining blog entry. But to transfer from there to my adorable, purse-sized Dell Mini—mine thanks to my marvelous Writing Sponsors—requires the additional step of a USB jump drive (something the old Toshiba remains quite gleefully ignorant of). And while that step went perfectly fine, I can't say that the process of extracting my near-400 missing files via 3.5" floppy did the same.

Hell, it seems, hath no fury like a 3.5" external floppy disk scorned, or even one which has been called gently upon to accept files for transfer via totally functional—not at all corrupt or even looked at sideways!—and the process resulted in multiple blue screens of death, which frightened me and probably caused me to turn a little blue myself. While I can certainly extract my files from their current Internet residence, copy-pasting them—even three times each—was preferable not only from the laziness aspect, but likewise from that exotic viewpoint of "efficiency".

(As you might imagine, it was with a copious quantity of relief—if not an alliterative allusion to the same—that I matched file totals on the crutch-supported Toshiba and the baby-fresh Mini at the end of the day and found that, YES! All files had, eventually, survived and made a successful ship-to-ship transfer.)

And, miracle of minor technological miracles, here I am, blogging with a FULL and even accessible backup again! And an "R" key that does not self-activate, leaving a trail of "R"-slime across "R"-unfriendly words! AND I can use a standard USB jump drive to hop and skip my latest—if not greatest—bloggy messes right from my Bike-n-Blog computer directly onto the Internets!

It's nothing to the world at large, I imagine, which will go merrily on regardless of my convenience or efficiency. But to me, today is momentous indeed, and if it is true that the largest triumphs are really the smallest, then this is a really big one, baby.

Either way, I'm going to enjoy every last word of it.

Why I'm Not Quitting My Day Job*

2009-06-20T11:01:00.001Z

I don't think I've written about it yet, but for the past seven months, I have been an unwilling member of the migraine-afflicted. The doctor who diagnosed me—on the ass end of a three-day bitch of a headache, so brutal that it kept me from sleeping for the hugely better part of that time frame—surmised that I'd had migraines longer than that, claiming that most people do, but they think they have a sinus infection, or allergies, or whatever other ailment that doesn't necessarily RETURN on them with the general unwelcome-visitorness of a migraine.

Anyway, while I do enjoy spending time along the lovely shores of Denial, there are times when I have to suck it up and seek medical assistance, regardless. That migraine-diagnosing three-day crack whore of a headache in November was one such case, and so was this week, wherein I finally overcame my fear and loathing of the warnings in the label of the generic Imitrex my doctor prescribed ... because I had not one, not two, not three, but four—FOUR!—migraines in the expanse of a single week.

Fuck you, Migraine Fairy, and that's all I've got to say about THAT.

On the subject of pharmaceuticals, however, I have rather a lot more to say. Now, while I can certainly see why some people live in a perpetual state of "natural cure seeking", I prefer, if I'm going to be ingesting non-food items ANYWAY, to have something that has at least a bit of scientific research to back it up. That being said (with apologies to The Righter, as always, for that stupid, Big Brother-esque phrase), I don't purport to enjoy adding pills and sprays and whatever other format the medication du jour comes in to my health regime ... no, not in the slightest! But when the alternative is lying flat on my back for up to 72 hours at a time, with no books, no music, NO INTERNETS, and not even a wee little bit of entertainment of any sort (unless you count refreshing my flax-seed cold pack as "entertainment"—I do not), well.

Pass the damn pills, thankyouverymuch!

So after the fourth magic anti-migraine pill of the week—and I'll give them this, the makers of Dr. Reddy's abundantly over-packaged Sumatriptan Succinate Tables, they make a MOST effective migraine stopping potion!—I phoned My Lovely Lady Doctor (her nurse, actually), and after a lengthy discussion of my symptoms, treatments, and mitigating circumstances (hello, Age and Hormone Fairies! please help yourself to a nice big cup of arsenic! BITCHES!), the nurse consulted with My Lovely Lady Doctor and they came up with this brilliant plan: MORE. MEDICATION.

Mind you, it makes sense, and there IS, per my request, research to back it up. But. Given that part of my query involved hesitancy to take "too much" (whatever that might be) of Dr. Reddy's individually-wrapped silver migraine bullets, why anyone expected me to be delighted at the notion of adding ANOTHER set of machine-pressed pills to my arsenal is beyond me. Yeah, yeah, I'll be delighted when I've physically heard the door hitting the Migraine Fairy's ass and knocking her to the ground in a crumpled heap, sure. But meantime, it just means another trip to Drugs.com's Drug Interaction Checker to check interactions between the growing list of my meds—and also my supplements, because that's important to check, too—and oh my gosh, I am LAZY, people! And this is going to put a cramp in my weekend America's Next Top Model viewing!

*Ahem!*

So. Once The Exotic Neurotic defused my neuroses with a few neat links, including this one to Mayo Clinic's "Migraine guide", I was on board with the steroid prescription, albeit still somewhat unwillingly.

"You'd better freaking work," I told the box of medications, drawing at least one odd stare from passers-by as I exited the pharmacy.

Fortunately—for me, if not anyone who reads this blather—I then started seeing the warped side of the situation.

As I drove home, you see, I was happily recollecting the fact that the pharmacist—not as cute as the one I used to have, but still rather adorable, and quite likely fresh out of pharmacy school (and therefore young enough to be my biological offspring, BUT HE WASN'T)—was fetchingly close to knowing my name. This is quite appealing, because it implies that I'm adorable, too (or, yeah, the pharmacist might be good with the names of HIS BEST CUSTOMERS—shut up, KILLJOY!).

ANYway, I was thinking that if I was a pharmacist, I'd be more likely to memorize people's pharmacy code numbers than their names, being as I am: 1) THAT big of a geek, and 2) better with numbers than names (see #1). Then it occurred to me that, rather than numbers, it would be SO much fun to see if people could be classified by loosely-beaded combination-names of their various pharmaceuticals, which would take me from my standard name to something like: Norflutilevomethyltriptan.

Which, while it doesn't precisely trip off the tongue, is still a damn site better than it would be, if I were still on the anti-depressants and muscle relaxants in addition: Norflutibuprolevocyclomethyltriptan

This nonsense led me to the next logical—"logical", in my twisted little screw of a side-bar universe—step, which would be to make up stories about my imaginary clientele (the ones I would have if I was a pharmacist, that is). For example, in the case of Norflutibuprolevocyclomethyltriptan, I could certainly be glad if she'd lost the terrible muscle tension she used to suffer (that would be the "cyclo" part of the name), and hey! Isn't it marvelous that she's no longer depressed (that's the "bupro")—at least for the season?

Think about it! If I worked at a large enough pharmacy, I'd soon have the background for a veritable pharmacological soap opera: "As The Pillbox Turns", perhaps, or maybe "General Pharmacy", or ... ooh! I've got it! "The Sick and The Healthy"! Except, let's face it, what fun are the healthy?

It all went on inside the thankfully-confined confines of my mind for much longer than I'd like to admit, even here, in the fairly anonymous security of my blog anonymity. But! The end result of it all was that I did get over myself enough to take the medication, and it even seems to be working—with nary a side-effect to be seen, and part of the credit for that has to go directly to My Cute Pharmacist, who kindly pointed out that if I didn't want to be staring at the insomniacal ceiling, I'd take my doses of the "meythl" bit of my revised pharmacological moniker "as early in the day as possible". Also, you'll be relieved to know—as funny as I found it all to be when I was thinking of it—that writing it all out has convinced me of one overwhelming fact: it's very important that I do not quit my day job.

*At least, not in order to become a pharmacist!

Copying a Master

2009-06-18T21:38:00.002Z

As things turned out they need hardly have bothered, for by this time, the "Dawn Treader" was gliding over a part of the sea which seemed to be uninhabited. No one except Lucy saw anything more of the People and even she had only one short glimpse. All the morning on the following day they sailed in fairly shallow water and the bottom was weedy. Just before midday Lucy saw a large shoal of fishes grazing on the weed. They were all eating steadily and all moving in the same direction. "Just like a flock of sheep," thought Lucy. Suddenly she saw a little Sea Girl of about her own age in the middle of them—a quiet, lonely looking girl with a sort of crook in her hand. Lucy felt sure that this girl must be a sheepherdess—or perhaps a fish-herdess—and that the shoal was really a flock at pasture. Both the fishes and the girl were quite close to the surface. And just as the girl, gliding in the shallow water, and Lucy, leaning over the bulwark, came opposite to one another, the girl looked up and stared straight into Lucy's face. Neither could speak to the other and in a moment the Sea Girl dropped astern. But Lucy will never forget her face. It did not look frightened or angry like those of the other Sea People. Lucy had liked that girl and she felt certain that the girl had liked her. In that one moment they had somehow become friends. There does not seem to be much change of their meeting again in that world or any other. But if they ever do they will rush together with their hands held out.

I stumbled onto this passage entirely by random chance. My women's writing group—fresh from the triumph of hosting our first, highly-successful writing conference—is now becoming more focused in our writing, which has led to our Fearless Leader actually doling out assignments between meetings! (The better to focus our efforts, my dears.) Our first assignment (part one) was to locate a paragraph of writing by one of our favorite authors, copy it, and explain why it was so good.

Having had little difficulty arriving at C. S. Lewis as one of my greatest favorites of long-standing, I had similar ease in selecting a work from which to make my one-paragraph pick: The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader", my favorite in the classic series The Chronicles of Narnia.

But selecting a single, excellent paragraph to discuss ... that was something more of a challenge. What paragraph to pick? Much as I would like, I did not have time to spare re-reading the entire book—besides, there would be far too many wonderful options from which to choose. I thought of various scenes, and spent a little time debating the merits of this one or that one, but then I flipped through the book and randomly (?) stopped on page 202, which, in my battered old copy, happens to be the beginning of Chapter XVI, aka, "The Very End of the World".

If you're not familiar with the book—and if you're not, by golly, you should be! Go read it! GO READ THE WHOLE SERIES!—you should know that it's not at all the Armageddon-esque chapter that the title may make it appear. Actually, you may have gathered that from the excerpt, which I have just now decided to leave oddly situated at the top of this here blather, rather than relocate it more towards the interior, which would likely make more sense.

Anyway, it's a lovely, descriptive chapter, largely—and strongly—detailing all of the marvelous trimmings of a physically flat world, as our heroes explore the outer-most edge of it. And as the second paragraph in the chapter—the one I selected—shows, C. S. Lewis has a remarkable gift of being able to tell stories within a story, rendering what is a very small part of the WHOLE story—and, strictly speaking, not a "necessary" part—as vivid and beautiful a memory as the story itself.

It's an under-rated skill, perhaps, but a vital one, I think. A story—any story—is not a self-contained system, after all ... it's not a unit unto itself. A story is a viewpoint, and it intersects other stories in too many junctures to possibly do justice to them all, but likewise, an occasional sidebar can make the whole story ever so much more intimate, full, and enriching. And it at least hints at the fact that there are so many other viewpoints that could be equally enthralling, if only there were time and space to include them all.

It's like if you're on your way to the grocery store—hardly "The Very End of The World", but bear with me—and you're stuck in traffic and the baby is screaming and you can't stop thinking about the fact that your lovely new house has been horribly damaged by water because that jackass of a plumber managed to fuck up the piping to the washer, and then because he WALKED OUT during the test run, the resulting water damage from a full load's worth of "test" laundry is probably going to result in you having to get the floor of the laundry room (aka, the ceiling of the guest room) redone, and then you turn your head out of traffic and out of the chaos of thought and nap-resistant child, and you see this old woman cradling a bouquet of daffodils and smiling ... smiling like those flowers meant more than anything right at that moment ... and then, you realize, you are smiling too ... just a little, but a true smile nevertheless!

That sort of detail, albeit not strictly necessary to telling the main story—or, anyway, the story you set out to tell—is VITAL. It's something C. S. Lewis is so incredibly good at, and it sucks the reader in more deeply, and the more deeply the reader is involved, the more real the story feels. You can be skimming over the sea of a flat world—a FLAT WORLD—and looking at Sea People and it STILL feels more real, because of the connections that we are accustomed to making in the daily stories of our own lives are also to be found within this story ... connections of detail, people, and yes, even digressions. ;)

One thing that bothered me, though, as I was re-typing my chosen paragraph, was the way that C. S. Lewis seems generally opposed to the use of commas. I, myself, would have included so many more throughout that paragraph, that it occurred to me to wonder why—which, I have to say, made me clearly see the reason that our Fearless Leader had very explicitly said to COPY the paragraph; copying has a way of focusing attention to the details of writing not unlike the way that the details of the story have a way of focusing attention to involvement.

It seemed to me, as I considered why C. S. Lewis would choose not to put a comma after, say, "As things turned out" or "Just before midday" or "Suddenly", that this, too, was another technique by which he entrapped his reader in his creation. When I read the sentences in question without typing them, they do not scream to my editing sensibilities about missing commas—that only happens when I'm typing them out. When I'm READING, I'm moving faster because those commas aren't around to slow me down. I'm not speed-bumped by the time of day, or delayed by the information conveyed by "Suddenly"—everything moves along quite quickly, despite the length of the paragraph, until I get to the point where C. S. Lewis wants me to slow down:

And just as the girl, gliding in the shallow water, and Lucy, leaning over the bulwark, came opposite to one another, the girl looked up and stared straight into Lucy's face.

Here, C. S. Lewis goes from zero to sixty in terms of comma use. He's brought the reader along on the journey—a necessarily lengthy journey—and now he wants the reader to be caught in the moment where Lucy, across the divide between air and water, somehow recognizes a kindred spirit and latches on, in an unbreakable bond, even though she never actually "meets" her friend.

For a paragraph that took a surprising amount of time to type out, the wealth of information and feeling that is conveyed makes it seem actually compact ... and that, too, is a masterful technique worth emulating.

Our Fearless Leader explained, when she assigned this exercise, that one way artists learn is from copying the masters, and after trying the writing equivalent, I can certainly see why. It's but one of many ways to learn more about the craft that is my passion, and I'm glad to have made the effort.

Kicking my comma habit is a bit of a humongous goal to set, but anything that supports my natural tendency to digress, THAT I can fully support!

Conversion or Coercion?

2009-06-16T02:25:00.000Z

Note: This blog entry is on the subject of abortion. I realize my postings have ranged a bit on the heavy side lately, so hopefully there will be more about fluffy kitties and frolicking bunnies in the near future, but sometimes, I just have to go with what's on my mind. Please drive safely, and obey all traffic signs.

There's a gap the size of the Grand Canyon between being pregnant and not, but the next gap—the one between a safe pregnancy and a dangerous one—is even larger. The distance is so great, in fact, that some people standing on the (fortunately) highly-populated "safe" side have no idea that the dangerous side even exists, much less has any residents.

When I'm feeling calm and understanding, I have a fair amount of sympathy for the short-sighted viewpoint that broadly states there is "NEVER" valid reason for abortion—particularly those abortions known as "late-term" abortions. I'd like to believe that, myself, but I'm afraid I have a bit too much of an understanding of basic biology to do so. There is so much that can go wrong ... even catastrophically so!

That's as good a reason as any to call any healthy birth a "miracle".

But ignorance, while it may give people the capability to dismiss statistics with a single wave of their hands, is no means at all of dealing with actual people. As Thud describes, there is a pain I find agonizing to simply imagine in hearing the story of a woman reviled as a "baby killer" for seeking the services of an "abortion provider" after her child died in utero.

That story, by the way, is not an exception to the rule—that story IS the rule, and simple Internet research will lead the honest seeker to heartbreaking stories seemingly without number. (I'm not giving links here this time, lest someone of an unshakable "Pro-Life" position—distinguished, at least in my mind, from "pro-life" by the vehemence and flammability of their rhetoric—use that link to further their own goals.)

Thud is so very correct when he states that those who choose to protest at the offices of doctors who provide abortions—among other things!—have no idea what has brought patients to those doors. They presume to know, by virtue of the generic "procedure" practiced within, but they do not know. They do not know, and more importantly, they do not want to know.

George Tiller, a physician known more for providing late-term abortion services than for anything else—though that was not at all the extent of his work—was gunned down on Sunday, May 31, 2009, in his church as he served as an usher. His wife of 45 years was sitting with the choir. And within 24 hours, blogs and comments I could barely stand to read—here are Google search results if you have a stronger stomach than I—described his murder as a "really late-term abortion".

There is no excuse for this magnitude unconscionable cruelty. If you do not understand the legal distinction between "murder" and "abortion", then you need to read a dictionary. If you do not LIKE the legal distinction between the two, then you need to try to work to change it through methods that are less like those of a terrorist and more like those of a rational adult. One person acting outside of the law—and outside of the vast, silent majority of otherwise similar belief-holders—does far more damage than the obvious ... extremists cripple the cause that they believe they support and moreover, their use of fear as a conversion tool backfires more often than not.

Coercion is, after all, a far cry from conversion.

If this entry seems disjointed, that's because it is: I've struggled for days to put it together, despairing of finding just the right words and just the right tack—rightfully so, because some of the sites I've been reading at would lead me to conclude that there is not one person on the pro-life side who would not dismiss me outright simply because I stand on the side of choice. This is another casualty of extremism—it gives the false impression that there is only one flavor of a position to hold, and only one type of person who holds it. When I realized that I was falling into that impressionable trap, I crawled back out to try again.

Then, my own history on the issue stopped me. After I gave birth to Little Girl, you see, I flipped from loosely pro-choice to loosely pro-life. I was not able to articulate the change beyond stating that while I still thought abortion should remain legal, I could not fathom availing myself of the option. Reading the many personal and painful stories of "late-term" abortion now, however, brought my views of bygone days into sharp and unmistakable focus: basking in the rosy glow of a wanted pregnancy with a life partner, a HEALTHY pregnancy for both me and my child, I was quite plainly unable to so much as imagine a pregnancy created out of violence, or a pregnancy that carried no possibility for life outside of the womb, or a pregnancy that endangered my life.

The poverty of my imagination—holding my much-wanted baby, the product of a textbook-perfect pregnancy that caused me only one single twinge of nausea and a few weeks of grossly-swollen ankles—made me rich beyond the wildest dreams of women who have not been in that position. Women who have suffered horrific and over-simplified genetic diagnoses such as "incompatible with life" or worse—and yes, there is worse than that. How could I—how could anyone?—be more capable to determine the best of no good options than the woman in question, her doctor, and as many second opinions as she needed?

And how did I get to this point, to realizing that I am not only pro-choice, but STRONGLY pro-choice? Because someone who misguidedly and mistakenly believed himself to be "pro-life" murdered a medical professional, George Tiller, who was performing LEGAL MEDICAL PROCEDURES at the risk of HIS OWN LIFE. Because the violent act that caused George Tiller's death led me to do my own research, and now I have some small understanding of the agony behind decisions that are so far from the simple word of "choice" that there are no canyons wide enough to characterize it.

George Tiller was helping women who few other people are truly willing to help—and he was helping them in a way that few other people are willing to do: he was trusting these women to make their own choices among horrific options, with not one outcome among them as happy and healthy and WHOLE as the one that I was lucky enough to enjoy (without having to make a single decision myself). And while I wouldn't wish that sort of decision on my worst enemy, I am absolutely certain that the decision MUST remain that of the woman, along with the advice of her doctors.

We all live in an imperfect world—a "fallen" world, if you prefer that terminology—through which we all muddle as best we can. If nothing else, I would hope that we could agree that we should all advance our causes and beliefs without trampling on the lives of others like ourselves, going about our all too-brief existences legally and with careful thought and thorough consideration.

If anyone among us, like the man who murdered George Tiller, cannot do this, we all suffer the consequences—the diminishment of those who do not see things the way we do as human beings and the elevation of those who do: the US versus THEM mentality that invariably results in women losing husbands, men losing wives, and children losing parents.

The "Pro-Life" camp may well argue that the developing child in utero is already losing, but I believe they fail to see the forest for the trees. As much as I would love to have a second child—and I would, but I cannot, for reasons that I do not wish to share here—if a second pregnancy threatened my life, I would consider my born child FIRST, and yes, myself, and I would want to have the option at MY discretion (and my doctor and partner). There is no one more qualified than THAT set of people to make any decisions that need to be made—indeed, no one else is qualified at all. And if that is true for me, then I must extend that it is logically true for other reasoning and mentally healthy adults.

I've gotten too far off track to tie this entry neatly up with a bow, and it seems appropriate enough, because there is nothing neat at all about this topic. As an imperfect solution, it corresponds to the world around it—but the same cannot be said of the murder of those who either agree or disagree ... although my words may not convert anyone, I will never so much as attempt to coerce anyone, either.

"You Are Not Fully Human"

2009-06-13T18:32:00.000Z

Having neatly—or not so neatly—made my stand regarding "Standing Down" (see last entry; it seems a little silly to link to it when it's just down the page, even though I know I've done that before) in the religious Facebook wars, I am now in the awkward position of re-evaluating my opinion on the subject. All it took was one precious little 58-second BBC "Sunday" soundbyte to make me do an abrupt about-face.

"All it took", indeed ... it wasn't some random blahdiblahdiblah pontificating on how atheists—and other non-believers—"are not fully human": it was a sitting Cardinal of the Catholic Church saying just that. So, really, it was a bit of a huge something that arrested and reversed my consideration, even if it was short in duration and unsweet in flavor.

But let me try to describe what happened in my mind in as cold a manner as Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor did when he explained how he was quite confident in his denigration of non-believers.

I read about what the Cardinal said on my favorite religious discussion board, and I wasn't much impressed, really. Honestly, all it takes is a quick scan-through of the comment section in my local paper—where the "Faith" pages are trolled by religious and non-religious snipers alike, and every one of them seems to be of the opinion that shooting first and asking barbed questions later is the most reasonable way to "debate" sensitive topics—for me to understand that there are scores of high-schoolers living with basement access to the Internet who alternately despise both believers and non-believers.

So here was a real, live Church official who apparently finds non-believers to be less-than-actualized as human beings. So what? There are rotten apples under most trees, but I truly do believe that people are basically good, and most misunderstandings are simply that: misunderstandings. And you can't resolve a misunderstanding by calling people names; therefore, calm discussion (aka, the road far, far less taken) must certainly prevail, and thus I set out to obtain the entirety of the BBC show in which the Cardinal was purported to slam atheists, so that I could gain complete context, and not make an ass of myself (unlike the Cardinal, and the nameless, faceless posters who besiege my local paper's "Faith" section).

What I hadn't counted on was how the sound of someone relegating me to the ranks of the "not fully human" would feel. Words on a page—virtual or real—are, it turns out, substantially less personal to me than a voice—even a disembodied voice. And when the voice of the BBC announcer wound its way pleasantly along the various other voices, all addressing the "Sunday" issues of that particular day, mingled genteelly with the Cardinal's equally—if a little sleepy-sounding—pleasant voice, and then abruptly gave way to that oh-so-very denigrating expression, well. It was so surprisingly like getting smacked in the face and spat upon all at once that I started to cry.

Yes, I really did, right there in the parking lot, with beautiful British accents streaming out my window, and a particularly mellifluous one callously consigning PEOPLE LIKE ME to a lesser, reduced humanity.

And I realized, though the choke of emotion, that while Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor clearly has no understanding of what atheism is—perhaps being of the belief of other misinformed individuals that a true atheist doesn't even really exist—that he honestly and sincerely does believe what he is saying. He doesn't think it's hurtful or offensive; he simply thinks "what I said was true". He delivered a down-graded status of humanity—of all things!—to a set of people who are enclosed by nothing more minor than the brackets of the word "non-believer" and he did it as casually as one might pat a dog on the head: there, there, you're not human. Here, have a biscuit.

(Sorry; it appears that I am not even part Vulcan—I cannot explain how I wound up with so much shattered glass inside my head without explaining the way it felt when it cut me.)

It really got to me, in that tiny expanse of time, how Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor doesn't just think that atheists are of a different opinion than he is regarding the existence of a deity in the universe, but he thinks that we are NOT FULLY HUMAN because of our non-belief. I can honestly say I've never questioned the humanity of people I disagree with, on this or any other subject. It would never occur to me to do so, no matter my beliefs on religion, for even if the Cardinal did have a Biblical understanding of what human beings were "meant" to be, his God—HIS GOD—has clearly permitted human beings to be what THEY wish to be.

What, then, could possibly be more human than a human being self-actualizing?

This notion that Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor has that atheists (and other "secularists") don't bother to consider—or outright dismiss—"the transcendent", too, is misguided at best, and misleading at worst. Being a non-believer does not preclude a very thorough understanding of religion; even us atheists are perfectly capable of understanding religion, and in my experience, those who have become atheist by way of leaving a religion (or two) quite often understand their ex-religions very well indeed. To suggest that non-believers simply "leave out" the supernatural is likewise ridiculous—while certainly one might dismiss that in which they do not believe, it is not at all necessary to do so. The polar opposite of a lack of consideration is, instead, what frequently results in atheistic belief, particularly for atheists who began as believers of one stripe or another.

But I don't want to digress too far today from the knife-point that the Cardinal so deftly wielded on the BBC "Sunday" program, because that IS what cuts, shreds, and tears. Denigrating the very humanity of a group of people is not only shocking, cruel, and pitiful—particularly for one who is charged with caretaking for what he believes to be the ETERNAL SOULS of humanity—but the very casual, almost blasé, way in which Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor goes about it makes it all the more offensive. It is as if he is discussing the nature of carrots rather than human beings—albeit human beings that the Cardinal believes are not QUITE completely human. What is next, sir? Do you simply toss non-believers upon the compost heap? We are not, after all, FULLY HUMAN ... why would you not "leave us out" entirely?

I have managed to work my way past grief at Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor's attitude and have progressed neatly into anger (as you might have noticed). This is good, for it means that I am working my way nicely through the time-honored traditions of processing something upsetting—which is, too, one of the purposes of my blog (for me).

But there is a down-side, and that is the additional mourning that I have yet to accomplish. Because while I can certainly hold on to the notion that people are, basically, good, I'm going to have to temper it with the fact that there are some people who—general nature aside—are never going to care enough to listen to a rebuttal like this, and even if they did, would not allow themselves to be reached. It is this level of willful ignorance that I hope never to attain, and so I will continue to read viewpoints that are nothing like my own. I will continue to try to consider them with care, and actually listen to them. Where appropriate, I will even do my utmost to RESPECT them, including those I can never understand, or perhaps, "fully appreciate".

If that is not enough to render me "fully human" in the eyes of some, then so be it ... it is more than enough for me.

Standing Down

2009-06-11T01:29:00.000Z

Contrary to what reading this blog might lead you to believe—especially lately!—I really don't spend much time advertising my atheism in real life. It even took me awhile to admit to being an atheist on my Facebook page, and not because I'm afraid of being judged by my faithlessness—although I am.

But another inherent problem with atheism is that, too often, talking about non-belief is seen as an attack on belief. While the two may indeed come together, it's hardly the case that they are equivalent. But while a believing soul stating "I love God!"—or, on Facebook, becoming a "fan" of God—is taken simply as a statement of faith, a non-believing individual stating "I don't believe in God" is too often interpreted to mean one or more of the following:

I'm annoyed that you believe in God.
I hate God.
I believe in God but am flaunting His authority by saying that I don't.
I can't believe that you believe in God.
I think you're an idiot for believing in God.
I worship Satan.
I am an amoral, unethical freak who should never hold any sort of public office.
I drink milk straight from the carton.
I have sexual intercourse with sheep.

While one or more of these statements could certainly be hypothetically true of some infitesimally small proportion of the entirety of the human population that currently exists—or, for that matter, has ever existed—I would think that this could also be said of equally minute proportions of the believing population, with some minor adjustments as follows:

I'm annoyed that you don't believe in God.
I hate that you don't believe in God.
I don't believe in God but am pretending that I do.
I can't believe that you don't believe in God.
I think you're an idiot for not believing in God.
I am an amoral, unethical freak who should never hold any sort of public office.
I drink milk straight from the carton.
I have sexual intercourse with sheep.

Now. Leaving out the fact that I couldn't think of a believing corollary to "I believe in Satan", it seems safe to surmise that there are weirdos on both sides of the fence, just as there are loud-mouthed and poor representatives out making fools of the general non-believing and believing populations as well.

That being said, if disdain is an appropriate or even marginally acceptable response to a non-believer stating: "I am an atheist." then it necessarily follows that the same response must be (at least somewhat) appropriate in the case of a believer stating: "I believe in God." And THAT being said, if a believer says, "I don't see how people get through life without God." and other believers nod and smile or give them a nice big Facebook "thumbs up", then is it not fair that non-believers may likewise support one of their own who says, "I don't see how people go through life believing in God."?

Granted, the preceding were rhetorical questions predicated on matters of opinion—and not only that, the opinions hypothesized as acceptable (or otherwise) here have not at all been established as such. But there is no question in my mind that there is a greater proportion of believers who feel that they can state what they like about their deity with impunity, vocal support from their peers, and face-value acceptance than is true of non-believers and their non-deities.

I think that this needs to change. Believers of any stripe and non-believers without stripes—or, if you prefer, the religious equivalent of Star-Bellied and Plain-Bellied Sneetches—should feel free to respectfully exchange ideas without reflexive pre-judgment or hyperbolic extrapolation beyond the clearly-stated obvious. Of course, the operative word here is "respectful", and I cannot imagine how some of the "leading" voices in atheism today feel that they're being even remotely respectful when they denounce believers as fools for believing, any more than the converse is true (and that also includes cases where "the Bible says so")!

Too often, strongly-held beliefs are treated as indisputable facts, but the fact is (as I've said before) that I can no more prove there is a God—or a god, or gods, or a goddess, or ... but you get the idea—than a believer can prove that there is. All either one of us have is our beliefs and feelings on the subject, and while that is a powerful lot—from our own, individual perspectives—it just isn't much to anyone else. It's something we can base our personal behaviors on, certainly, but it's not necessarily something on which any of us should base the rules for the behaviors of others, lest we find ourselves squirming under someone else's interpretation of what a deity wants of us.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, remember?

I have not put "I don't know how people go through life believing in the Christian God, or any other 'god'." on my Facebook page. I sincerely do not understand, but that's not reason enough for me to say so, particularly since in my case, flashing that statement up on my Facebook info would be more of a reactionary stance than anything else.

And now that I've taken the time to consider both sides, I realize that there's one thing the religious/non-religious discussion does NOT need more of, and that's implicative posturing—aggressive, passive/aggressive, or otherwise.

Beyond Belief

2009-06-08T03:24:00.001Z

Considering how much Oprah annoys me, it should be no surprise that I have also been annoyed reading her magazine, the glossy path to self-improvement, O. (It might be surprising that I chose to read the magazine at all, but when such things are provided as bathroom readers at Corporate—no kidding, though I am sure it's not actually sanctioned—it's hard to pass up a little flip-through during a longish wait for, well, for nature to take its course.)

Anyway, so I happened upon an article in a fairly recent issue of O that featured a labyrinth, in which I have more than a passing interest due to the eloquence of a fellow writer from my women's writing group, who has a labyrinth of her own. I was lured in by both the photograph of the article's author standing in her labyrinth, as well as by the article's title: "Charmed Circles" (from the November 2008 issue).

And then I got to the summary/lead-in paragraph, immediately below the title, and I was hooked; I'm always interesed when "believers" stop believing, or conversely—as was the case in this article—when someone who previously didn't believe starts believing. Given that I have never been even the loosest form of believer, it's an abstract fascination for me—like theoretical physics, it's far enough out there that I just can't seem to grasp it. But nevertheless, I had to read on, and since I preferred to do so at my leisure and comfort, I ripped the article from the magazine and took it home.

I have to say, while hardly what I expected—no conversion to Christianity was to be had, despite the implications that seemed rampant throughout the piece—there was one, brief section that did pique my irritation. This sort of annoyance has come to be, for me, an invitation to explore the whys and wherefores of such red-shaded emoting, and like my train-wreck of absorption in religion, I likewise can't seem to avoid introspecting on my pissed-offedness.

So here we are!

The time at which I read the few sentences of the article that poked me in the eye happened to coincide almost jigsaw puzzle-piece matchingly with a very similar bit of jabbing that occurred in the religion forums at which I have lurked for, oh, around about five years now. I was drawn out of my firmly-held lurkdom to post in those forums for the very first time by then, and while I've not similarly managed to draft my first-ever letter to Oprah's magazine, I figure a blog post on the subject comes pretty close ... in fact, I wouldn't doubt that my blather has a far better chance of getting read—at least in part—here.

The problem, as I see it, is two-fold: first, there are believers who have the notion that people who do not believe simply don't exist. I'm not certain this was the case in the bothersome section of the article I read, but it has cropped up on the religion debate board; the idea is that someone who professes to be an atheist, well, isn't. Apparently, us atheists are actually just theists in denial. Furthermore, the charge may continue as it did in "Charmed Circles":

"You don't know anything about religion. If you're going to be an atheist, you should learn about religion and make an informed decision."

Now, leaving aside for just a moment the fact that the person making this particular charge appears to at least grant that atheists DO EXIST—simply that the author of "Charmed Circles" was not "one of them"—this being my blog and all, I'd like to indulge in my own little free-form rant:

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME? "IF" I'm going to be an atheist, why in the hell should I be required to "learn about religion and make an informed decision"? How many theists have learned about religions other than their own? How, then, is THEIR "decision" informed? How does this whole decision-making process actually occur when more than a few of the theists I know profess that they can FEEL God in their lives—is there any decision to be made when you "sense" the presence of a deity? OR WHEN YOU DON'T?

And how is it, exactly, that theists are so lofty and quick to proclaim that atheists ought to know what they don't believe in when they don't go around to other theists and feed THEM the same line of holier-than-thou bull? I'm not just talking about atheism here, either, as the vast majority of theists of whom I am personally aware likewise do not believe in all but ONE religion. Your God, people, except for the one deity in which you do believe, YOU ARE ATHEISTS YOURSELVES!

You know what I think? I think that if you single-deitied theists are going to be single-deitied theists, you should learn about religion—and non-religion, because there seem to be a great many people out there who are operating under a great many misconceptions about atheism, not to mention agnosticism—and make an informed decision. That, my invisible friends, is what I think ... IF you are, in fact, a theist who is also a proponent of atheists "learning about religion" in order to make "an informed decision".

I realize that the snippet of the O article to which I was privy was not directed at me personally. I also realize that the full context of said citation was likely not presented—such things rarely are, particularly within the restricted word count of a magazine article—and that there is more to every story ever told than that which is actually told.

At the same time, it is the height of arrogance to tell someone else what s/he does or does not believe. It is likewise presumptuous—at best!—to suggest that said belief or non-belief must be thoroughly researched ... UNLESS you, yourself, are willing to follow your own advice. And in my experience, there are many more people willing to dish out this sort of most excellent advice than there are who follow it.

For example, the flap at the religion debate board to which I alluded earlier: a poster who did not "believe" presented the scenario that her likewise non-believing offspring was being harassed by believing classmates. The poster's position was that these classmates, having presented their childish understanding of their beliefs to her child (which they had, with at least one dire threat of her child's hell-boundedness) should now cease and desist their discussions, which was the request of her child. The poster also expressed her desire to educate her child in "all religions".

A fervent believer then suggested that the original poster arrange for her child to spend some time with a trusted, believing adult—and not just any trusted, believing adult, but one specifically of this poster's own, fervent beliefs—in order that the child be presented with "the truth". So, being finally pushed to posting, I asked: what about "the truth" of other beliefs? And was not surprised to be informed, eventually, that there is only ONE truth when it comes to religious beliefs.

I beg to differ, and moreover, I suggest that believers who believe this particular bit have not "learned about religion and made an informed decision".

Beliefs are not truths in the sense that they are absolute. Certainly, you may believe that your beliefs ARE absolute, but unless you have bothered to put yourself in the position of another believer—or a non-believer—you really cannot say that anyone else's belief-truths are not just as true as your own. It is imperative, in my opinion, that this concept—if nothing else—be imparted to every single human being, because without it, some believing souls (well-meaning though they may be) are going to denigrate people who have JUST AS MUCH PROOF OF THEIR BELIEFS AS ANYONE ELSE as "wrong".

Like it or not, in matters of belief, "truth" is exactly equal to opinion.

Holding on to this notion is something that I pride myself in—even though I struggle with it. And I frequently struggle with it! But it is so important to remember that as deeply as I feel that there is no "higher power" in the universe—which I feel not only with what limited brain power I possess, but also with my cold, black, shriveled little atheist's heart (we don't have "souls", you know)—there are people out there who feel just as strongly that there is. That our diamond-hard beliefs are polar opposites does not lessen their powers on us; we believe what we believe, and that is at once nothing and everything.

There was one other pronouncement made in "Charmed Circles" that did not charm me. With regard to the author's statement that she was an atheist, her believing friend—in addition to telling her no, she was not, and she really needed to do religion research—said:

"You don't ever want to define yourself negatively."

Overlooking the literal interpretation of this remark—and believe it or not, that's what I did, instead lurching forward to seize the figurative explanation by the throat and give it a double-negative death shake, à la, "What do you mean? Being an atheist IS NOT a negative thing!"—I have to say, the notion that atheism is a bad thing is quite pervasive, and strongly held. For example, in a recent NEWSWEEK poll, "only 30 percent [of respondents] said they'd ever vote for an atheist" (as cited in this NEWSWEEK article). Check that out ... politics don't even matter—if you're an atheist, 70% of people don't need to know anything else about you to know they won't EVER vote for you.

The stigma attached to atheism is unpleasant enough to make many of us atheists to feel as if we must choose our words carefully around those we do not know very well, lest we reveal something that is a pretty fundamental part of who we are and how we view the world around us. Incidentally, there are certain loud-mouthed, vehement "non-believing fundamentalists" who feel compelled to bash all believers with the same big bat, without discretion about the specifics of their beliefs—something they would be sure to revile, if only a believing fundamentalist were the one doing the bashing.

But, all of this figurative negativity aside, when I considered the accusation of "negative definition" from the literal perspective, it does carry some merit: atheism is, after all, defined as "disbelief in the existence of a deity". On the other hand, that IS what atheism IS—is it really necessary to create new terminology at the behest of a non-atheist? Again, this seems presumptuous in the extreme, and more than a little silly, for to extend it beyond religiously correctness and on to all facets of life, we would have to come up with new terminology for "apolitical", "asymmetrical", "atypical", and even "asexual organisms".

Oh, and what about "depression"? Is there ANY word in the world with a more negative definition than depression?

I fear that the challenge of arriving at a non-depressing term for characterizing "depression" is quite beyond me, but I do have a suggestion for a more uplifting classification for "atheism"—even though it is sure to fall prey to the sharp talons of the believing hawks who are as quick to seek offense in atheistic attempts at positivity, seeing them as flimsily-clad cover-ups of believer-denigration (not to mention, someone else is sure to have tried this before me)—and here it is: "atheism" should now be referred to as "beyond belief"*. Because it isn't as if atheists generally go round and discuss our atheism—there isn't really an alternative interpretation the singular scripture, "Thou shalt have no god."

We truly are "beyond belief", and even some believers have said so, suggesting that we do not exist. It is not a implication of an exalted level of existence—though there will be some bad apples on both sides who will taste that rotten flavor—but belief is beyond us ... just plain beyond!

And I, for one, feel very positive about that.

*Although I did arrive at this idea independently—at least as far as I can consciously recall—I did NOT originate this term. I don't know who did, either, but I did happen across this article about a week after beginning this blog entry. The article describes the use of the "beyond belief" in reference to nonbelievers beginning at least three years ago, when "... Dale McGowan, the Atlanta-based author of 'Parenting Beyond Belief' set out to write his book."

Beautiful Irony

2009-06-05T04:11:00.005Z

If you've been reading the entertainment news at all, I'm willing to bet that you're sick of hearing about Miss California, Carrie Prejean, and probably considering taking a pass on future episodes of the so-called "entertainment" news at all (the latter of which may be the subject of one of my future blathering rants). For now, though, if you ARE sick of hearing about Miss Prejean, you may wish to skip this here blog entry—I got so sick of hearing about her that I decided to talk about her, and frankly, I would hate for that to happen to anyone else!

So, Miss Prejean, if you have not heard—or if you have heard and are unwisely choosing to ignore my warning—was handily fulfilling her smiling duties and representing beautiful California at the recently-held Miss USA pageant. And then the pageant came to its token "interview" section, wherein contestants are purportedly judged on their ability to coherently address one potentially charged question posed at the whim of one random pageant judge.

Just to be clear, pulling a judge's name out of a hat and then having to answer whatever question that person comes up with is not a new idea in the general scheme of the Miss USA pageant—it has been going on since 1952 (although I can't confirm that it has included an "interview" portion since that time, since the pageant's website is rather sketchy about that, as well as on any sort of specifics regarding the importance of this part of the pageant.

Anyway, don't rely on any translations of the event, see for yourself how that abundantly entertaining round went down for Miss Carrie Prejean.

Mmm hmm. Now. As anyone even slightly versed in politically-charged events of recent history will know, the issue of same-sex marriage is no medium-volt hazard—this is about as high as you can get on the socio-political voltage scale, and it doesn't much matter if you're for or against the issue ... someone is going to shoot you down in flames should you express any viewpoint at all on the subject. Even without clicking the link, you can safely assume that at least as many people lauded whatever Miss Carrie Prejean said as hotly disputed it, but lest we get distracted by the hot topic itself, let's take another look at what, exactly, she was asked, and what, exactly, she said in response:

And, again for clarity, this is a question and a response IN COMPETITION for the dubious title of Miss USA.

Perez Hilton (celebrity blogger and pageant judge drawn by Miss California, Carrie Prejean, for her interview question): "Vermont recently became the 4th state to legalize same-sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit. Why or why not?"

Miss California, Carrie Prejean: "Well, I think it's great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised and that's how I think it shouled be between a man and a woman. Thank you very much."

Now, I have to say, this is hardly the most coherent question ever raised. "Do you think every state should follow suit?" Well, that's up to the states, now, isn't it? From the phrasing of the question, it is patently clear what Mr. Hilton believes, even if you don't follow his blog, but even if it weren't, I'd like to see less of an attempt to lead a respondent to any question down the garden path to the questioner's beliefs and more of a "Hey, I have an ACTUAL QUESTION for you" kind of question, maybe something more like this:

"Vermont recently became the 4th state to legalize same-sex marriage. Do you think same-sex marriage is an issue for the states to decide? If not, where or how should this issue be determined, and why?"

It still needs work, I'm sure, but my idea is to evolve a gut-reaction-level question into a more intellectual one, so that it can still address what is a powerful issue in our society today, but by getting at the actual political root, rather than tapping into the overdone social and religious arguments. Talk about who should be deciding this issue, rather than what we personally have already decided! Provoke an actual discussion instead of just being provocative.

But if Mr. Hilton's question was somewhat sloppy—and stickily agenda-frosted—Miss Prejean's answer was downright slovenly, and a whole lot undercooked. I'll take it sentence by sentence:

"Well, I think it's great that Americans are able to choose one or the other."

Really? Miss Prejean thinks that Americans can CHOOSE one or the other? With a measly four states legalizing same-sex marriage, she sees this as a choice? Wouldn't that be a little bit like saying that opting to pass on the annual time changes is a CHOICE, since there are a whole TWO states that don't subscribe to daylight savings time? Okaaaay.

"We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage."

We do? Because *I* don't live in such a land, as my state does not permit same-sex marriage. And oh, hey, Miss Prejean doesn't live in such a state, either!

And, "opposite marriage"? Really? That's an even worse phrase than "traditional marriage" for referring to a marriage between a man and a woman.

"And you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman."

In my country, the issue is still up for debate, and far from decided. In my family—which is a whole 'nother issue, and should not be cited in a way that appears to confuse it with "in my country", which apparently means "in my state", only not in MY state, or Miss Prejean's—I have personally opted for a marriage between a man (Little Girl's daddy) and a woman (me), but then again, it wasn't really an option, as THAT'S THE ONLY KIND OF MARRIAGE THERE IS RIGHT NOW (in my "country", i.e., state).

And, really, how is what we "choose" in OUR families relevant here? The issue at hand is THE LAW. Or, rather, that's what the issue SHOULD be.

Oh, and before I forget, Miss Prejean may wish to strike the expression "I think that I believe" as it is unappetizingly wishy-washy. You may think something, you may believe something, but if you only think that you believe something, I contend that you really don't know WHAT you think. Or what you believe.

"No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised and that's how I think it should be between a man and a woman."

No offense to anybody out there? How does Miss Prejean figure THAT will work? Obviously somebody's going to be offended, particularly since she said, "No offense", which is a ridiculous expression, as it readily acknowledges that she IS giving offense.

More importantly, however, can someone please explain to me the relevance of "that's how I was raised" in this discussion? I was raised on a farm and I think it's an excellent way to be raised, but does that mean EVERYONE should be raised on a farm, or even that I think that's how everyone should be raised? Is that meant to explain Miss Prejean's entire viewpoint on same-sex marriage as it pertains to state law? That's IT?

Even MORE importantly, hello? The question was this: "Vermont recently became the 4th state to legalize same-sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit. Why or why not?" Having barely managed to squeak out her own personal beliefs (such as she THINKS her beliefs are, at any rate), let's not overlook the fact that Miss Prejean has NOT managed to answer that question—she hasn't addressed the issue of state legalization of same-sex marriage AT ALL, in fact. And while that evasive rambling and self-centered speaking may serve Miss Prejean very well should she ever decide to enter the political arena, it still FAILS UTTERLY to address the issue at hand.

Okay, one more sentence to go: "Thank you very much."

Yeah, right. And thank YOU very little, as that is what you gave, both in thought and in word. Moving on ...

There are plenty of things I am personally opposed to that I can still understand are not my decision to make for others. I, personally, have no interest in a religious marriage ceremony, for example, but that hardly means I have Thing One to say on the subject of religious marriage. Virtually all of the arguments I've heard given against same-sex marriage have a religious basis, though, which does tend to involve me in the argument, because religion and law are a highly flammable mix. And when I hear "points" like, "Marriage is a GIFT FROM GOD", I can't help but recall that MY marriage is nothing of the sort.

I was not married in a church, and I was not married in a religious ceremony—my civil ceremony differs from same-sex marriages in ONE regard, and one regard only: I was fortunate enough to be attracted to a life partner of a gender that does not match my own (fortunate, because I am thusly able to marry my partner). Certainly, there are churches who do not have a problem uniting partners of different—or of no particular—religious persuasion, just as there are (even now) churches who are pleased to unite partners of the same gender, but the point is that NO ONE IS ASKING CHURCHES TO DO WHAT THEY DO NOT WISH TO DO.

The point here is NOT religion—not religion in the sense that some define it, anyway (aka, One Size Fits All). The point regarding same-sex marriage is CIVIL, and having a civil marriage myself, I would appreciate having it not disparaged by people who hold "opposite" points of view. As the saying goes, if you don't approve of civil marriages, DON'T HAVE ONE. If you don't approve of same-sex marriages, DON'T HAVE ONE. If you don't approve of religious marriages, DON'T HAVE ONE.

I don't care who you are, how you were raised, or whether or not your breasts are real—though I may very well have something to say about breast implants that are financed by the pageant organization that you represent in a future rant. But if you can't separate your personal feelings on a subject from the fact that your precious little feelings are not, in fact, any sort of basis for the law of the land (much less a good basis), then I do care. I care a hell of a lot.

And I also care when someone like Miss Carrie Prejean—speaking not only as Miss California, but as the Miss USA Runner-Up—had this to say about her runner-up status:

On April 19, on that stage, I exercised my freedom of speech. And I was punished for doing so. This should not happen in America. It undermines the constitutional rights for which my grandfather fought for ..."

(Here is the source of this snippet, though you will need to scan down to find the relevant section—just search on a specific phrase from the section I quoted, such as "undermines the constitutional rights".)

To summarize, Miss Prejean feels that she was "punished" for her "honesty", and moreover, that this "should not happen in America". I wonder if Miss Prejean could point to the section of the Bill of Rights that indicates that freedom of speech should come without cost? By speaking about her grandfather, she seems to be expressing an understanding to the contrary, but on the flip side, she still goes on to conclude that the fact that she did not win Miss USA "undermines the constitutional rights for which my grandfather fought for".

I should like to propose an alternate explanation for the fact that Miss Prejean did not win the Miss USA title: perhaps her "honest answer" wasn't really an "answer" at all. Honesty, inasmuch as honesty IS a valued trait, is still not a protected, constitional "right". Even such rights as are prescribed in our much-lauded Bill of Rights are, by and large, not absolutes. We are not, for example, granted the right to happiness: we get the right to the PURSUIT OF happiness. Furthermore, we don't get rights that stomp over anyone else's rights: our right to free speech does not preclude the rights of others to the same, which is why Mr. Hilton got to ask the question he wanted to ask—poorly phrased though it was—and also why I get to blather on ad nauseum with MY right to free speech about what Mr. Hilton and Carrie Prejean had to say with theirs.

I'm winding down here, believe it or not, but I know you're waiting for the ironic part of this whole situation, and here it is: while Miss Prejean is promoting herself as a Barbie-esque martyr to free speech and is busy taking her critics to task, smiling beautifically as she chastises us for our harsh words (she WAS, after all, "very careful to articulate in saying" that she "did not want to offend anybody"), she holds herself above PROVING her charges, even as she is careful to utilize the informal fallacy of false dilemma, suggesting that she did not win the dubious title of Miss USA on the basis of her HONEST answer, ignoring the clear probability that honest or not, her answer sucked the bottom of the beauty-pageant fish tank like an extra-large algae-eater.

More than that, though, the irony of this entire situation is not about any of the sidebars that have been cherry-picked out of the tangled, twisted mess, up to and including the supposed right to be able to answer questions honestly and without having anyone react to what was said. The irony is that all of this—every last hideous little ugly bit of this—is about "beauty".

Pretty funny when you think about it, isn't it?

The Last Newspaper in Alaska

2009-05-31T05:05:00.000Z

I have a running argument with a friend regarding the importance of dreams—not dreams that are really goals, lofty or not, but rather dreams that are, well, DREAMS ... the stuff that our unconscious minds craft and spew and occasionally leave us with remembrances of. My friend's stance is that these are important things—or at least entertaining, and the fact that my gender-unspecific and blog-nameless friend holds this position may be influenced by the fact that my friend's dreams are of the erotic variety on a fairly regular basis.

The last time I had such a dream, I was pregnant with Little Girl, and over a decade younger than I am now.

While I did have vivid and recollectable dreams as a child, my adulthood has been largely dream-free. Oh, I know I probably still have dreams—I simply don't remember them. But from my perspective, not having dreams and not remembering them is a pointless distinction. After all, how would I know the difference?

If I had to guesstimate, I would say that I have/remember one dream per month (this may be a somewhat generous sum, as right now, I can't recall any dreams this year at all, other than last week's). I occasionally awake with the feeling that I've just come out of a dream, but in most of those cases, I do not have even the slightest notion what the dream was about—I generally can't even say if the dream was "bad" or "good". This poverty of dreams does not really bother me, lending some credence to the argument that you can't miss what you don't have.

Last week's dream did rather more than make me feel secure in my non-dreaming existence—it made me rejoice. Because, honestly, if I had to endure this sort of stupidity on a nightly basis, I could clearly not choose the dream in front of me. Last week's dream was like being trapped in front of bad television, with no means of changing the channel ... who wants to put up with that kind of crap?

Likewise, even with the potential for eroticism, I could clearly not choose the dream in front of you. Anecdotally—and my furry-chicken-rare naughty dreams included—the X-rated dream varieties also seem to tend towards the ridiculous, flinging you into scenes from a pornographic spectacular that you never, EVER fantasized about in real life. Inappropriate—and generally unattractive—people always seem to wind up the stars, and even if the dream is perfectly ... ummm, "fulfilling", shall we say ... upon waking, scrubbing oneself clean in a hot shower with a suitable shower partner is the more likely than bragging about your unconscious conquests.

But getting back to last week's G-rated dream, there I was (Dream Me, to be specific), doing the dream dishes, and Dream Neighbor Girl stopped by. Dream Little Girl is in her room, I told her. But I came to see you, she replied. And she held out a newspaper so I had to dry my hands and take it from her. It's the last newspaper in Alaska.

Now, in the dream—as, sadly, in real life—I have heard of newspaper closings, though not recently, nor can I recall hearing about the loss of one of Alaska's newspapers, much less the last one in the state. In the dream, I was not so much surprised at the newspaper closure, but more so that Dream Neighbor Girl would trouble to go all the way to Alaska just to procure me a copy ... all alone, and at her tender pre-teen age, it seemed like rather a long distance to travel.

Not to mention, I had no idea WHY she thought I'd want a copy of "the last newspaper in Alaska".

Wow. Thank you. Dream Me told Dream Neighbor Girl. You're welcome, she said, clearly pleased with herself. And then she left, and I looked at the HUGE headline, filling the top half of the front page. I can't remember what it said, but I'm pretty sure it was touting its own status—like this:

THE LAST NEWSPAPER IN ALASKA

And ... that's it, people. Yes, THAT is IT. The whole dream. The entirety of the storyline that my feeble excuse for a brain found necessary to spawn during what should have been my restful night's sleep. THAT is what my mind is compelled to puke across my unconscious's dream movie screen. I mean, come on. That's not even D-list material!

(By the way, what comes after the D-list? Is it the E-list, or do we skip right over poor letter E in movie- and acting-quality discussions, not unlike in grade school, and go right on to grading with a big, fat F?)

Anyway, my point—such as it is—is this: I really don't give a flying rat's gluteous maximus about my lack of a "rich" dream life. I don't care in the slightest whether my mind has simply given up on dream-movie production, or whether it has made the (wise) decision to give up on dream-movie recall. With stinker productions like "The Last Newspaper in Alaska", either option was clearly the right choice.

Honestly, even iocane powder would have been understandable.

Generally Good is Not Good Enough

2009-05-31T02:08:00.000Z

One of my Corporate leaders found fault with a project I had just completed—"just" as in mere minutes before I received her complaint, and "completed" as in wrestled mightily with and worked on exceptionally hard—and I, quite frankly, lost my shit.

I was angry far beyond proportion for the gentle chastisement, and even though I had to admit—after looking it up to make perfectly certain—that I was, in fact, in error, I was still upset. Actually, I wasn't "angry" or "upset" so much as I was SEEING RED ENRAGED, and due to the fortunate luxury of being at home at the precise moment at which I received the message detailing my error, I let fly with a stream of generalized invective against the vagaries of Corporate. And then I had myself a good cry.

As if I needed more supporting evidence that my shrink IS doing me some good—even though my waistline has yet to reflect the slimmed-down svelteness of my mind's baggage—this sort of incident, once common, hasn't happened in quite awhile. Furthermore, even though I DID rage against the Corporate machine, I had enough presence of mind to reflect that I wasn't quite sure who or what I was really angry AT.

Oh, sure, I was saying this, that, and the other thing (punctuated heavily with the many and varied forms of the F-bomb with which I am intimately familiar), but my rant was far from directed. I think that, in the end, it was this overt indirectness of focus that landed me in tears—tears I would have likely suppressed not so long ago, but which this time, I decided I should simply unload.

While BabyCat voiced her concern—sweet thing that she is—and FRISKitty headed for quieter corners—being no less caring than BabyCat, but a good deal more concerned with her own sanity—I was realizing all of this and, finding no ready conclusion, considering the dilemma drew my attention away from my upset and back to the problem at hand. Thus focused, I was able to resolve my error rather handily, and the Corporate Gods were pleased—indicated by their lack of firing off any actual lightning bolts from their exalted positions down into my low-lying pit-life—so that was nice.

On the back burner, though, my curiosity simmered, and I eventually reached a conclusion: the biggest cause of my upset was rooted in my perfectionism (surprise!) but the tap of the root was firmly stuck in the mire of irony.

You invisible people are probably well aware of this, but I was only just yesterday able to put it into words for myself, and I found it not only ironic but tragic that while criticism is typically meted out in specifics, compliments all too often come only in generics. For instance, the error that was pointed out to me was EXTREMELY specific, taking a forty-page triumph and reducing it to a one-line gaucherie. Meanwhile, while I am certainly no kissing cousin to Corporate compliment, I am hardly unfamiliar with it, either. But it tends to take this format: "Thank you for everything you do."

The difference between the detailed criticism and the generalized compliment is more than the necessity of correcting what Corporate may deem as a grevious error (I was hardly the only person who disagreed with that classification)—it's the difference between the priority of Corporate leaders saving face amongst themselves and Corporate peons feeling valued.

More than THAT, however, it's really a societal—and perhaps a universal—misdirection: we focus on what's wrong, and we frequently manage to fix it, which is great. But in focusing on the few specifics that are wrong, we miss the many, MANY specifics that are RIGHT. And when we do deign to acknowledge them, we fail to enumerate them, which is more than a failure to communicate—it is a failure to CONNECT.

Make no mistake about it ... while it took a Corporate correction to lead me into the light, once standing directly underneath my personal flickering 4 Watt illumination, I can very clearly see that spot-lighting problems can easily consign a helluva lot of good stuff to lose clarity in the dark.

Which is not to say that I've suddenly converted to silly Pollyanna-ism and am now embracing the notion of being optimistic simply for the sake of optimists (because us pessimists make them uncomfortable with our realism, don't you know)—not at all. But I do think it is imperative that acknowledging a specific right is done at least as often as acknowledging a specific wrong. Because details are what appeal, inspire, and add value ... to anything! And neglecting positive specifics adds a cutting edge to the negatives that makes them slice painfully deep—far deeper than a generic bandage can possibly hope to contain, much less heal.

If anyone's managed to wade through the muck in this here blogswamp to get to the end, I thank you. But I'll thank you more if you go out and give a very detailed compliment to someone who deserves it. You won't have to look far—really, you only need to look closely.

Uniquely UnAmerican

2009-05-28T01:49:00.002Z

Before I read the citation for the article, "Newsmax Magazine Rates the Top 25 Most Uniquely American Cities & Towns", I'd never heard of Newsmax magazine. I had also not heard of Peter Greenberg, "best-selling author and travel editor of NBC's Today show", who was the authority commissioned by Newsmax to grade cities and towns for inclusion—or not—in this illustrious list.

I have heard of Today, though, so I guess that's something.

Anyway, after merrily Googling the article itself—the citing article that I read being only interested in the placement of its host city in Mr. Greenberg's list—I was none the wiser as to the rating system behind the selections, or the identification of the selection criteria themselves. Being thus unenlightened in the absolutely vital background behind the compilation of the list, it naturally followed that I should remain clueless regarding the cities and towns who were actually up for the potential honor in the first place.

Because, come on, there's no way Mr. Greenberg went through EVERY city and town in America!

Since the article did not provide even a hint at the methodology—or lack thereof—behind its subjective scoring and selection categories, it is left to anyone who wishes to speculate to do so, unencumbered by supporting facts or even decorative opinions regarding these ratings. And so I will!

First, I'd like to start with the grades, which were meted out among what I'll follow up with, which were the graded categories themselves. The grades issued by Mr. Greenberg were assigned by category (there were nine) were on a 10-point scale, with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest, thereby prohibiting absolute failure, which was very generous of him, although likewise excluding the possibility of what is typically considered a "perfect score"—100.

Really, who comes up with a 90-point classification system? Why not add just one more category?

Newsmax's one-category-short-of-categlory categories were these: hospitality, wholesomeness, family-friendliness, business-friendliness, devotion to religion, culture, community awareness, scenic beauty, and education.

Long-time readers—of whom I am aware of one (*nods to The ListMaker*)—are sure to spot the category that spiked my blood pressure, but leaving that obvious nonsense aside for just a moment, I have to say, there doesn't seem to be one clearly defined criteria in the lot. Which, actually, is why I wanted to read the source article in the first place, because SURELY subjective objectives this vague would have to be defined in opinionated depth therein, right?

WRONG. If you follow the link to the source article—and here it is again for your convenience—you will see pretty much only that which I've cited here. There is no further explanation of how, exactly, a city's "hospitality" is determined and ranked from 1 to 10, and there's certainly no clarification for what the heck a city's "wholesomeness" is comprised of.

I don't know about you, but envisioning a "purity test" for cities did amuse me for a moment, but it did not detract in the slightest from the confusion I continue to experience when considering how a conglomeration of homes and businesses can qualify as "wholesome". Do we detract one point per bar, two per strip club, and three for "End of the World" evangelists, standing on street corners and shouting "REPENT!" to passers-by? Or do the placard-carrying, doom-foretelling, soul-saving seekers amp up a town's "devotion to religion" rating?

To get to the meat on this juicy bone—on which I never seem to tire of gnawing, I know—how does "devotion to religion" qualify as "uniquely American" in the first place? I could see "diversity of" before "devotion to", because America has a somewhat noble history of attracting those who wished to worship as they chose, rather than as the state religions in their native European countries dictated that they worship. But what is "devotion" if not promoting a religion to a law of the land? Are not the countries that inspired American immigrants to excommunicate themselves from their homelands more "devoted", by virtue of having a state-sanctioned religion in the first place?

After all, could not the argument be made that the Crusaders, in their whole~~some~~sale slaughter of people with different theological ideas than they, were thoroughly devoted to their religion?

The point is that dropping a superficially-pretty title without further explaining how it characterizes anything even remotely valuable is utterly pointless. Even in matters of opinion—which, let's not forget for a moment, this TOTALLY is—supporting arguments are, if not required, at least useful in promoting your opinion as "well thought-out", rather than demoting it to "something you extracted from your anal orifice with the misguided notion that YOUR shit doesn't stink just as badly as everyone else's".

What bothers me more than anything else about this particularly crappy article is the fact that it's not an article at all. Oh, sure, you get some pretty write-ups on some lovely towns—and it's nice to see my beloved Sheridan, Wyoming get some recognition—but as far as being more than a nice blurb for a tourism brochure, it's nothing. Nothing! There is no explanation of how many cities or towns were examined. There is no explanation of how the categories were arrived at. There's not even any explanation of what "uniquely American" is supposed to mean.

I realize this isn't a scientific report, but it's still embarrassingly sloppy drivel—skimming the surface like a skipped stone, but never plumbing the depths of available material. What is it that defines a town as "wholesome"? What makes it "family-friendly"? What comprises a city's "culture" or "education", and what makes one city better than another in these regards? Each one of these categories could have been made into an article of its own and could have been thoroughly interesting in its own right, not unlike each selected city and town was described and elaborated upon.

Instead, the thing people—people like me, anyway—will remember most about this article was thing that leapt to mind initially, and refused to leave because no refuting information was there to usher it out: that the writer of the article apparently holds atheist Americans in bottom-feeding esteem, since "devotion to religion" is a determining facet in what he holds up as "uniquely American".

How very uniquely unAmerican of him.

The Bipolar Butcher

2009-05-12T03:10:00.002Z

I've been just a tiny little smidgeon negligent in visiting my ~~money-hungry~~ friendly ~~neighborhood~~ regional dentist ~~lately~~ during the past few years. Good thing I'm not one of those people who lets guilt eat great big steaming chunks of HER SOUL over something like that, or worse, someone who might feel compelled to try to cover up the fact that my spirit has been thus decimated.

Anyway, ~~circumstances~~ a virulent toothache finally provided the necessary impetus for me to get my ~~sweet, well-meaning~~ bitter, procrastinating self into the nearer of "my" dentist's two regional offices. To their credit, they expedited what could have otherwise been an indefinite and ibuprofen-heavy waiting period.

And when I say "to their credit", I mean it quite literally, because paying for my replacement filling on credit was the only way I could handle my ~~surprise~~ not really surprising dental bill. Two weeks before Christmas.

So. That was all well and as good as such things can be, and my throbbing, constant toothache was reduced to a relatively tolerable sharp, shooting pain whenever I ingested a substance that was under the wavering limbo pole of room temperature.

"Relatively tolerable" in the sense that, while cringe-inducing, at least the cold-shy, hit-and-run new pain didn't squat down and staunchly refuse to leave the premises like the temperature-indifferent, houseguest-from-Hell old pain.

While I savored drinking water heated to a balmy 72ºF—which, actually, is substantially more than room temperature around these here parts, during the winterish time of year—there was, sadly, more trouble brewing. For, in the interim between my decayed filling's diagnosis and the happy (for the dentist) day when it was evicted and a new and improved model was installed, I had endured the indignity of the dreaded (by me) "pocket check".

Personally, I suspect a dental worker plot on this. Because when I go in to the dentist with a toothache but leave with tender, aching gums that had not been bothering me in the slightest—until the hygienist broke out her Pointy Tools of Oral Doom—well! There is something suspicious going on.

My hygienist on that first, pocket-searching visit was a sweet young lady I'll call The Timid Officiant. She seemed to know perfectly well what she was doing—and was dedicatedly committed to her job—but she was also, I think, young enough to couch her dire predictions regarding my gums' future efficacy in holding my aching teeth in my head with softly cushioning sympathy for their craptacular potential in this regard.

I was nevertheless suitably chastened, and vowed to improve the failing health of my poor, neglected gums in the month of holiday-season parole that the dental office's schedule granted between the overlong x-ray session and pocket check that The Timid Officiant had just overseen, and my follow-up appointment. Because I was still, at this sorry-gum point, skittering along the razor's edge that separated a normal cleaning from a (drum roll, please) "debridement".

Not having the foggiest notion what something that sounded absurdly like it might involve the removal of the female figurine from the top of a wedding cake might actually involve, I was blissfully unaware of the more gory definition that my decrepit pink dictionary finally coughed up: "the surgical removal of lacerated, devitalized, or contaminated tissue".

Hello, flashback to the sort of demented dentist that is written into D-grade horror movies!

So the holidays passed and I diligently brushed and flossed, and soaked my long-suffering gums in a soothing, near-nightly stream of alcoholic beverages (antiseptic goodness)! And on the not-so-happy day of my potential debridement, I returned to the dentist's office, where they asked me if I'd gotten their message that The Timid Officiant had a family emergency and therefore I would be seeing someone else on this historic day ... someone that the receptionist did not, as I am about to (though she certainly should have), call The Bipolar Butcher.

Now, I'd had the misfortune of meeting The Bipolar Butcher some years earlier, though I couldn't recall the specifics—blurred, as they had become, by intervening years of not encountering her. I was almost instantly suspicious that the smiling, superficially kind woman before me was, in reality, The Bipolar Butcher, but surely it could not be ... I had not seen her in at least six years!

Of course, I later recollected that I'd carefully avoided her for three of those years by specifically requesting The Gentle Hygienist of My Childhood, but at the time—and feeling badly for The Timid Officiant's loss—I could not quite extract that pertinent fact from the cramped, pack-rat hole that comprises my memory banks.

So there I was, a (physically) mature woman who was ~~thriving~~ barely surviving the perils of Corporate, and faced with the prospect of refusing The Bipolar Butcher—who I was still not quite sure was who I thought she was—to her apparently-nice face (and then trying to find another appointment-suitable gap in my meeting-laced Corporate schedule) OR just sucking it up like a REAL Corporate tool, and making the best of what I had a sinking feeling would be a very painful hour under the purported "care" of The Bipolar Butcher.

I wonder if The ListMaker might classify my demure acquiescence to follow The Bipolar Butcher back to her den as "Home-State Nice"?

It started off innocuously enough, with the usual pre-scraping foreplay: pointless chitchat. But then instead of getting down to business, The Bipolar Butcher handed me a little Dixie cup and informed me that the first thing SHE did was have her patients rinse with mouthwash before she ~~would condescend to work on them~~ got started.

Have I mentioned that there are few mouthwash formulations out there that fail to trigger my hypersensitive gag reflex? No? Well, suffice to say that this was not one of them.

After successfully suppressing what would typically be an audible—though unproductive—retch, I returned the empty cup to The Bipolar Butcher and waited for her to assemble her ~~weapons~~ ominously pointy implements. But The Bipolar Butcher enjoys a lengthy foreplay, it seems, as she tries to lull her victims into the cushiony, false notion that she's not really going to poke, scrape, pry, and chisel her way into the record books as the most torturous dental hygienist that they have ever known.

Given that my juvenile, contrary switch was flicked full ON when The Bipolar Butcher handed me that cup of flavor-abused alcohol—along with my heightened dental angst when I saw through her facade—I was not about to be relaxed.

The Bipolar Butcher was not fooled, either. She sweetly—and all astonishedly—inquired as to whether I was nervous (I suppose my every tensed muscle clued her in?) and assured me that I had nothing to fear. She told me, as she sharpened her miniature pick-axe, that should a debridement prove necessary, she would, of course, anesthetize my gums.

*Hello? This is wyo's anxiety speaking. Are you kidding me? If you're going to do something so heinous that it requires anesthesia of any sort, I am going to Red Alert. 'Cause anesthesia is for covering pain, and pain is NOT GOOD. NOT GOOD AT ALL.*

It seemed as good a time as any to mention that I require extra anesthesia, lest I freak the heck out when I felt something that no mere mortal was meant to feel—dental procedures topping that list—and subsequently laid my hands upon the inflictor of such pain. And not in a healing way, if you catch my drift.

The Bipolar Butcher looked aghast that I would even dream of stopping the demonic ritual of a filling by grabbing a dentist's drill-wielding fingers, much less imply that I would do the same to her precious digits.

"Well, then," she placated my totally tense person by patting patronizingly—if also a little hesitantly—my ready-to-strike arm. "We'll have to get you into a straight-jacket, then."

(Okay, I'm kidding there ... what she actually said was that she would be sure to numb me up good. BUT I KNOW WHAT SHE REALLY MEANT.)

And so, my follow-up "pocket check" proceeded eventually, with The Bipolar Butcher engaging my antisocial self in conversation throughout the process far, FAR more than was necessary. Unlike less proficient practitioners of the fine art of Introvert Annoyance, she knew to ask questions that required more than a yes/no answer. Worse, she would pause between pockets and wait for that answer.

Now, I'm not entirely unreasonable. I don't mind a good conversation amongst friends. That may have a little something to do with the fact that my friends do not attempt to stick sharp objects into my gums whilst we are conversing. Also, they're MY FRIENDS!

But The Bipolar Butcher would not accept a lower designation than "friend", nay, not even from another dental hygienist who entered the room. She tried to convince this Other—who did nothing more to engage her than expressing mild surprise to see her there during hours which she typically did not work—to attend an impromptu after-work event, with, it seemed, just the two of them.

The Other politely—and unsuccessfully—demurred.

And so it was back to my pocket-check, and a lengthier search of my dental divots I have never before endured. Still, I could tell—by virtue of an appreciably lowered sensitivity and by my excellent peripheral vision, which caught no hint of RED on the pocket-check entry screen to my left—that my score was, on this day, going to handily beat the threat of debridement.

The Bipolar Butcher, bless her black heart, was careful not to let disappointment color her tone when she confirmed that she would "only" be performing a cleaning this day.

"But I think it would be best if I used the ultrasonic cleaner. Otherwise, it could still take awhile. Does that sound okay?"

All unpleasant past experience with said ultrasonic cleaner unfortunately blocked from memory, I foolishly said, "Sure."

It took only the initial pass of this hideous little gadget to unblock my past encounters with the ultrasonic cleaner and flood my mind (again) with regret for not turning away from The Bipolar Butcher the very first moment I saw her. And her ultrasonic pitchfork, too!

If you're so lucky that you're not familiar with the ultrasonic cleaner, allow me to explain: it is a mild-mannered little beast that cleans your teeth with water, which sounds innocuous enough so that you readily agree when you're asked to submit to its "tender" care. And then the water is turned on and you realize it's been hyperdrive accelerated and injected with shrieking Hellspawn to boot, for the noise it makes has all the charm of a full classroom of dental hygienists running their fingernails slooooooowly down a chalkboard. IN YOUR MOUTH.

And—bonus for all wannabe ~~butchers~~ dental hygienists—it's surprisingly painful, too. Also, it's not all that quick, at least, not in the hands of The Bipolar Butcher.

In addition to tricking me into submitting to yet another nerve-wracking dental procedure, The Bipolar Butcher had also trapped me into playing her assistant by handing me the valve-operated suction device by which I could minimize the time between the violent spurts of irrigation—during which I truly felt like my gums were being forcefully hosed right out of my mouth—and rinsing out the bloody residue of the process. And it also prevented me from ACTUALLY RINSING, being that all it did was schlurk the ultrasonic cleaner's spew out of my mouth, and did not provide any cooling or soothing properties while so doing.

"And how are we doing?" asked The Bipolar Butcher, fairly humming with delight at the rigor-mortis-like tenseness of my entire body.

*WE? How are WE doing? I'll tell you how WE'RE doing, you royal-WE-using tormentress! YOU are having the time of your life making me suffer through the worst dental visit I've ever had—up to an including the time I had a tooth extracted, because at least that experience included FULL ANESTHESIA—and I am thinking how very much I'd rather be in an all-day Corporate meeting full of jibberish-quality jargon, and THAT'S JUST SICK.*

With that thought shrieking in my head, I opened my mouth and said, "Fine."

(And that's not Home-State Nice, lest you think otherwise ... that's just me taking stubborn right over to stupid.)

My prize for my idiocy was, naturally, a continuation of the hydro-agonizing plaque-removal process. The indignity of serving as The Bipolar Butcher's assistant, too, went on—and not only that, but I also had the additional displeasure of having her "gently" explain to me that I was doing it wrong.

"Now, you need to turn the suction on before you put it in your mouth," she said, her evil eyes glittering with a flat, reptilian sparkle. "And turn it off after you take it out."

She spoke slowly, so that I could understand, but it was still hard to hear her over the increasingly insane voice in my head that had progressed from muttering about how if I ever wound up with her as my own personal sadist again, I would find me another dentist so fast that her head would spin, and not just on account of her being demon-possessed!

Much as I was certain that she'd like to prolong my torture under the tenderizing auspices of the ultrasonic cleaner, eventually, of course, we wound down to the tooth-polishing phase, wherein The Bipolar Butcher offered me a choice between spearmint flavor (hate it) and strawberry (hate it more). This went about as pleasantly as the flossing that followed, wherein she AGAIN foisted flavored nastiness on me, all the while nattering on about how THIS floss was vastly superior to the stuff that had been in vogue at my last dental checkup, but OH MY, when I did get my own snazzy plastic tub of the stuff, I HAD to make sure it was the blue, flavored kind, and not the white, unflavored, for the white would shed little flea-like particles all over my clothing as I flossed, which would, I gathered, make me look like I had dandruff of the chest.

As I had no intention of buying anything The Bipolar Butcher was selling, I ignored this information, except as how I might attempt to translate it into my blog.

And then, just as I thought I was about to make my escape, The Bipolar Butcher took the last straw and plunged it straight into my heart.

"You know, I have this too!" And she took time out from trying to force her blue floss up through my gums and into my brain, to point with her gloved finger at her masked face.

"Huh?" Having been deeply engaged in my happy fantasy of a world in which The Bipolar Butcher had not left her day-off wallpapering project to afflict me with her presence, I had missed just what "this" was.

"This!" The Bipolar Butcher, floss trailing from her hand as if it had been excreted from between her fingers. She poked my sticky-outy incisor—the one that makes me look like a lopsided, wanna-be vampire whenever I try to smile mysteriously—and her cheeks crinkled up in a big ol' grin while I seethed at the comparison between us.

"Huh."

Far from being deflated by my dual mono reply—tone and syllable—The Bipolar Butcher prattled on about the dental flaw that connect her to me, and wrenching her precious, dandruff-shampoo-shaded floss up into my already-abused gum tissue. And I? I started to imagine strangling her with dental floss.

(No, not really—inasmuch as it might be a normal and even expected idea, I was much more interested in getting the heck out of there than in ironic disposition of The Bipolar Butcher.)

At the conclusion of the whole, wretched experience, The Bipolar Butcher removed her gloves and mask, and chortled before informing me that she would help me set up my next appointment before ~~allowing me to leave~~ I left. Although I had the presence of mind to demure based on the demands of Corporate, it was not enough to deter her—"Oh, you can just reschedule if you need to!"—and she was flipping through computer screens before I could locate my purse, which she'd squirreled away, somewhere in her den, the better to keep me from escaping prematurely, my dear!

The true horror of the scheduling hit me just as The Bipolar Butcher sighed with disappointment.

"Oh, I'll be out then ... visiting my next grandchild! Well, I'll just schedule you with The Timid Officiant, then."

And while I stood, purseless, with my sore gums flapping in the breeze, she tried—and failed—three times to do this, her "software troubles" delaying me EVEN FURTHER, and giving me plenty of time to listen to the voices in my head.

*She seriously thinks I'm going to EVER ... EVER ... let her near my teeth again? Is she nuts? Well, OF COURSE she's nuts!*

*She's SPAWNED? There's MORE LIKE HER? You gotta be kidding me!*

*There's still time to strangle her with that nasty blue floss ...*

The fourth try was the charm, or perhaps The Bipolar Butcher plain ran out of ways to fake computer ineptitude. And so she handed me my appointment details—and, of course, the bill for what evil had just transpired—and conjured my purse out of its otherworldly hiding place, and escorted me out of dental Hell.

And while I dutifully added my next appointment to my calendar—sometime later, after procuring a sugary snack to start rebuilding the protective shield of plaque over my teeth—I also added this note:

"Accept NO dental hygienist substitutions!"

For I am not sure it would be possible to survive a third session with The Bipolar Butcher.

A Nice Big Cup of Diet STFU

2009-05-10T13:03:00.002Z

I am angry with Oprah. It's not a past-tense statement, even though the thing Oprah said that ignited my ire hit the news back in October (yeah, I guess I've been remiss in ~~ranting~~ blogging for even longer than I thought). Every time I see the particular newsbyte in question, printed in benign black-and-white and lying in my stack of similarly obnoxious nonsense, it bothers me that she should be putting this crap out where so many other (over-)sensitive souls have access to it.

As an aside, I should say that one of my latest shrink- and stress reduction-recommended exercises is that I give up this "need" I have to "be right". I think this would be much easier to do if there wasn't so much WRONGNESS in the world, but aside from that, The Exotic Neurotic hypothesizes that I would do better at achieving that lofty goal if I would "let go" of some of that which ails me by talking about it. Which brings me back to bringing my blog back to what it was meant to be—an outlet for me.

(Though if anyone else should find it to be worth an occasional, insomniacal read, that would be fine, too.)

Anyway, back to Oprah, and her not-so-recent announcement regarding her weight gain, and her subsequent pronouncement that set me off like a rancid tomato launched against a brick wall. Ready? Here it is (and here is the source, because I'm all about citational correctness):

Oprah says money, fame and success don't mean anything if you can't control your own being. "It doesn't mean anything if you can't fit into your clothes," she says. "It means the fat won. It means you didn't win."

Excuse me, I'm all pissed off again. I need a little break (don't worry; you won't even notice I'm gone ... along with editability, that is one of the beauties of the Internets).

Okay. So I'm back, and in case it's not blatantly obvious, my beef with Oprah's grouse about her weight is that she's indicating here that being overweight is a failure capable of overwhelming financial, social, and just plain general "success" (all of which I think even the most jaded Oprah anti-fan can agree that the woman has in abundance). This isn't even an implication—it's a flat-out, explicit statement on par with Elizabeth Hurley's well-documented idiocy in which she stated that if she attained a size 14, she'd do the world the favor of offing herself.

Now, I think Elizabeth Hurley's verbal spew might be more forgivable than Oprah's in the sense that when she made her utterly insensitive and purely ridiculous remark, she did so as a woman who has relied on her looks for her livelihood; perhaps she simply had no other sense of self-worth beyond her appearance. But Oprah ... as beautiful as Oprah has ever been—and she does have stunning features—she also has demonstrated that she has talents aplenty beyond the mere superficial. Oprah also knows what it's like to be stigmatized for the number one generates when one steps on a scale. She knows how hard it is to lose weight, she knows how easy it is to regain it, and she knows that millions of women identify with her because of that.

What Oprah doesn't seem to grasp—which I find unfathomable, given the sheer duration of time in which she's struggled with overeating—is that it's not a simple matter of "controlling your being". It's a complicated problem that flourishes as a tenacious crabgrass in our luxurious garden of a society, along with gaming addictions and various other issues that just don't exist when you have to fight each day for food, shelter, and even your very existence. I think this is why it sometimes sounds purely stupid to people who don't deal with it personally—"Suck it up and eat less, bitch!" would be a sampling of the snarky advice that they might dish out, and it can honestly seem that simple, in the thin, upper stratosphere of comprehension.

But Oprah, of all people, should know that a person is more than a number on a scale. Likewise, she should know that to struggle with that number is more than a struggle to "fit into your clothes"—it is a struggle of a lack of necessity, here where we can obtain food on virtually every street corner, without having to harvest it ourselves or run it down and kill it ourselves. Where people in this country overeat from boredom rather than hunger, for comfort rather than nourishment, and with abandon rather than with focus, losing weight involves more than cutting back—it requires the same level of involvement and in-the-moment living that procuring a mere hand-to-mouth subsistence did, and, quite frankly, there are not very many people who struggle with their weight who have ever had to put forth that kind of drive and effort.

Furthermore—and getting back to why I'm specifically angry with Oprah—what she should know and should keep in the forefront of all of her public and private weighty struggles is that THIS ISN'T ABOUT WINNING. At least, it isn't about winning if winning is defined as "not being fat". It's about being involved and enriched by something other than that which is readily available and so instantly gratifying (food), and working very hard and very determinedly towards being immersed in simply living life, with all the pain and struggle and awkwardness that actually living entails ... something few people talk about in this age of single-minded drive for "feeling good" and "being happy".

Not that I'm knocking the quest for an improved sense of self or the pursuit of happiness in general, because these are worthy goals indeed. But the journey is what should be emphasized, not the destination, because when life is the trip, the only endpoint is death, and thus "getting there" isn't half the fun ... it's ALL the fun. So as much as I hate the fact that I've wound up coming to this particular conclusion, I guess what I'm saying is that having a battle to fight IS important—perhaps even vital—to our psyches. Having lost weight more than once, I think I can say with some certainty that achieving a numerical goal comes with equal parts achievement and loss ... because where do you go when your scale says what you've been looking for? Staying put is a nice idea, but it's not nearly as satisfying as the accolades you receive when you've "gotten healthy".

To be fair, Oprah does emphasize health in relation to weight, although you wouldn't know it from that one snippet that got replayed and reprinted for long enough for me to bury this article in the pile, because I just didn't even want to think about it. But when Oprah also makes it so abundantly over-obvious that she's focused on her appearance, it's hard to consider health as her primary motivator.

Granted, when you're in therapy—as I am—or even just in the clammy grasp of some new fitness program or "eating plan" (why call it a "diet" when you can make it sound so much more official?), it's pretty much a given that you will look around and see people who need to be following the same course as you. It's a ridiculous notion, given that we are all individuals and what people see of us—even if we are "out there" as in being on television, or dare I say blogging—is but a fraction of what we ARE.

At the same time, it doesn't seem like going out on a limb to suggest that Oprah has some serious mental issues when it comes to her weight. You don't become a television, magazine, philanthropic, and other titular accolades kind of superstar, with influence that spans decades and the entire globe in a vacuum—you know what you say has a power that most people can only imagine.

So when you say, in essence, that you're a meaningless loser because the one thing you haven't done in your life is permanently beat your addiction—and using food as solace is certainly an addiction, in the sense that you are never, EVER going to be free of having to guard against falling back into your old, comforting (albeit comforting in a desperate, temporary sort of way) habits—you're putting something pretty powerful out there, suggesting (at the very least) that you are going to "win" eventually, and never have to fight this battle again. Well. THIS ISN'T GOING TO HAPPEN. An addiction, or a bad habit if you prefer, is always something you have to watch, a point which Oprah herself makes with tip-of-the-pin precision at the end of the linked article when she says, "I can't believe I'm still talking about my weight".

If I've learned one thing in therapy, it's that real change is gradual change, and by "gradual", I mean "glacially-paced". No, Oprah, you don't actually beat years of comfort-eating by finding some new eating or exercise plan. Oh, you can stick with them for awhile, as can anyone who is well-supported and -motivated, but if you don't address the things in your life that led you to stuff food in your mouth as a means of numbing your feelings, or giving you something obvious to focus on (your weight), or distract yourself, or cover up a problem, or whatever "or" might be behind your individual case of emotional eating, well, eventually you will get bored of your "healthy" dietary restrictions, or you'll "cheat" just a little and then a little more, or you'll become injured and unable to follow your favored exercise plan, or you'll reach that one milestone in your program beyond which you can't improve, or something else unforeseen will occur and you'll do something I'm entirely unfamiliar with—and why shouldn't you, since you're YOU and not me (for which you ought to be eternally grateful, were "eternity" more than a concept used in hyperbole).

The point is that, like many of our society's nouveau behavioral issues, over-eating is quite often more of a symptom than an ailment unto itself. And in stating that her many achievements mean nothing if she can't fit into her clothes, I think Oprah is demonstrating that—although I am neither a shrink nor do I play one on TV, so I'm not about to make this an official pronouncement, or speculate on what's behind her distressing self-disparagement.

But I fail to see how anyone can be expected to look at a person—the whole person, and not just the physical size of the person—and see beyond physical size when someone who has railed against that sort of behavior due to her own experiences on the receiving end of such judgment CAN'T DO IT EITHER. Oprah, honey. You have to stop calling yourself a failure, both in public and in your own head. You have to stop thinking you've won—or that "winning" is even possible outside of a closed system with a fixed endpoint—and realize that this is your modern-day necessity ... life IS a struggle, and fighting to lose some excess is a vastly more pleasant battle than struggling to find enough food to merely survive.

And maybe the reason so many of us cycle through weight loss and gain has less to do with our own petty "issues" than it does with really feeling alive when we start "winning". That sense of control and significance and POWER is a hard aphrodisiac to top, and I think it is on par—in some ways—with running a race or something else which can actually BE won. We want to feel that important and have that sense of achievement, and given the generally limited sense of creativity that tends us towards wanting to do the familiar (which we KNOW we can do, having done so before) rather than the unfamiliar, perhaps there is some sub-basement level of consciousness driving us to repeat the weight-gain cycle simply so that we can repeat the hallowed and hailed weight-loss cycle.

(It sounds preciously stupid, but there it is, anyway.)

So. Having blathered all that out, I have to say, I'm not really mad at Oprah anymore ... which, I suppose, is a respectable achievement for these many—and largely free-ranging—paragraphs. Although, having just typed that, I realize I should clarify: I'm not really mad at Oprah anymore for what she said about "money, fame, and success" in relation to "fitting into your clothes". I actually am still quite irritated with her for what she said about her thyroid troubles, but that's a rant for another day.

Maybe.

The Places Where Memories Are Stored

2009-04-19T23:07:00.002Z

We recently got a new puppy, but that's not the point of this post. To get the new puppy, we had to travel a fair distance, to a city where Little Girl's daddy and I lived when we were first married, around about 18 years ago, and that city—or, more specifically, what happened at a certain old haunt of ours within that city—is the point of this post.

See how I almost totally avoided digressing there? You have no idea how difficult that was for me. In fact, it was so unnatural, I don't think I'll do it again. So on with the digression ...

When we arrived in town, we went straight off to visit our as-of-then unselected pup and his ten brothers and sisters, so that Little Girl's daddy would have time to start mulling over his options with first-hand observations to aid him. Up until that time, we had only seen the puppies in photos, and I don't know about you, but neither one of us can tell a puppy's personality or hunt potential from a snapshot image.

Personally, I can't tell squat about a roly-poly puppy's inherent hunting "gifts", period, but then again, I am an unrepentant cat person, so I expect that could have something to do with it.

Anyway, after the pups had showed Little Girl and her daddy their adorableness and abilities to pick up a variety of items and carry them around—as designated photo- and video-grapher for the event, I was more involved with trying to keep one or more of the little beggars on-screen at all times than actually paying attention to what it was that the pups were up to—Little Girl's daddy and I took a drive down Memory Lane. Which, in this case, was the main drag of the town where I started and later dropped out of graduate school.

Now, there are many things I remember with perfect clarity about that year, but I was surprised—as we escorted a fairly disinterested Little Girl around the city where we had started our married life—at the far vaster collection of things that had fuzzed, or had been flat-out expunged from my memory. Given that the time elapsed since said memories were formed was a lot closer to two decades than any other round number, I perhaps should have been able to buy the vowel in the word "duh", but no.

What got to me was when I started thinking about living in this place for a year, and how much happens in that time—a YEAR—and how many times we must have driven that very route ... and then I realized that I hadn't got the foggiest notion whether the place where Little Girl's daddy and I were now arguing about whether he or I had kicked the most ass playing that Terminator video game was over here or over there, upstairs or in a single-floor building. We were sure of the block it had been on, and that was about that.

But what did the building look like? What was next door, or across the street? How far was it from where The Professor had lived, or The Renaissance Man, or The Red Baron? And what had happened to the exhilarating spiral exit to the parking ramp that I so fondly pointed out to Little Girl before realizing that it had vanished?

Despite the substantial passage of roughly half of our lives' worth of time, I was nevertheless dismayed by the gaping holes in my memory, because I recollected just enough to be cognizant of them—a collection of thought-potholes more great and hideous than the largest collection of "Precious Memories" figurines I had ever seen (in other words, huge, my invisible friends ... HUGE). That Little Girl's daddy's memory was far worse than mine—how he figured he could possibly have been a better video game player than me is simply unfathomable, though I suppose if I were him, I would "forget" that bit, too—didn't seem to faze him.

As for me, on the other hand, every time I had to say, "I don't remember," I felt the wispy hand of nostalgia curving to fit into my own hand, and clenching tight with a strength that belied its fragile frame. I felt displaced, in a location that had retrospectively seemed so familiar, and thoroughly unsettled by how unfamiliar, in fact, it had all become.

And I realized that the strangeness of the city now was not entirely due to whether or not I remembered whether that giant craft store had squatted in the spot it now occupied, or where the old donut store—what had it been called?—had evaporated from. It was mostly because the city had moved on in the world, just as I had, and even where I thought it had been standing still, within my fading collection of memories set in its long-passed scene, it had also been shifting, changing, and even disintegrating.

It was like discovering, quite suddenly, that the surface of the earth wasn't anywhere near solid after all, and trying to walk on landscape made of watered-down Jell-O was fraught with falls, scrapes, bruises, and a painfully fractured sense of self.

(Please ignore the fact that falling on Jell-O would be unlikely to cause scrapes or bruises, would you? I like the way it sounds regardless.)

There was one place that surprised me in the polar opposite kind of way—the pet store, where Little Girl's daddy, long before Little Girl arrived to grant him that title, had made frequent trips to support his discus habit (fish, not frisbees), and their various and sundry needs. This pet store, to which I had also been for times now lost to counting, had apparently changed not one whit: it had not moved, it had not repaired its terrible, mountainous and pitted parking lot, and I don't even think the owner had cleaned the dusty, cobweb-heavy ceiling, from which the same old pipes still sprouted, unfettered by a drop-ceiling that would have rendered the place an entrance not unlike a hobbit's cave.

The broken fish tank by the entrance might have been there twenty years ago, as well.

And the smell of the place—not foul, but not mild in scent, either—floated up as we eased ourselves in, and then the memories came down like pulverized asbestos, flooding my mind and overflowing into my veins, to the point where I actually felt like I'd slipped back in time. This place, so unchanged in sight, scent, sound, and touch—even I wouldn't go so far as to taste anything there—had a power to it that so few other places in the city had at all, much less at this magnitude, and it radiated this intensity, pulling memories out of the ether, and then fanning them at me ... inviting, bewitching, and teasing.

Of course, as much as it might seem like you can, you can't actually go back in time—not for more than a moment, anyway. And though my memory was suddenly refreshed, it was still more moth-eaten than not, and the light of now could never be more than butterfly-shadowed by it. But while I didn't realize that the owner was the same (Little Girl's daddy said he might have been just a touch more gray, but that he was otherwise unchanged), I did revel in a total recall of the layout, which returned to me the moment I entered the building. It was something I think I would never have remembered without the restorative healing that stagnation provided.

As much as change is inevitable and all-encompassing, the pockets of utter resistance comfort us by validating our experiences. "Look here!" these dens of delayed change call out, "The past is not lost, not really! Not totally." I think most people gravitate towards such places in their own lives for that unique staleness—those unaltered (or largely unaltered) spaces are such anomalies in the world at large that they are treasures we cherish, anchors we clutch.

That's how it was for me, anyway. And even as Little Girl's daddy and I welcomed a new canine member into our family (he more welcoming than me), we both still grasped on to that brief glimpse of a place that change had forgotten ... but that we still remembered, with a little help from the place itself.

I told Little Girl as we drove away from the past and on to Clever Dog, "Daddy and I were so excited about that store because it's a special place for us—it kept our memories in it until we came back to collect them."

(I didn't say it so well as that, though, as I was speaking aloud and not writing it down.)

Little Girl, her eyes still looking forward, not yet seeking the peripheral past, looked back at me then. It was easy to see that she didn't really understand what I meant. My own thoughts were jumbled—the abundance of memory-keeping places around me were all fragrant and prolific (though none so strong as that single pet store)—past mingling with present in a discordance that is hard enough to feel, much less to explain to a child, whose memories all remain within easy reach, outside of sensory-locked place containers.

And as much as I wanted to catch more lost memories and hold them down with words, defining them in a more accessible way, I turned away, too. I left the past in the places where it had been kept so well for so long, and for myself, retained only the strength of the feeling, and the absurd juxtaposition of time that it had generated.

It wasn't the easy choice, but it was the better one.

Aftermath

2009-03-24T11:02:00.000Z

When you're preparing for an event, you only think of its ending in abstract terms—such as the things you must set aside in order to prepare for the event.

"I can't do that now," you might say. "Wait. Wait until later."

But because life has no consideration for our business or our busyness, it does not so much as pause, giving us no leeway, no respite, no spare room for our precious events, no matter how huge. Life does not wait ... not for births, not for weddings, not for funerals, and certainly not for events that—while indeed far bigger than we knew at their modest, hopeful beginnings—are still lesser than these three.

So I should not be surprised now that all of the things I have set aside over the past month of event preparation* are still waiting for me. I should not be startled by their ambush or their tugs and pulls and yanks for attention in the loud swarth of quiet that has now unfolded. I should not be taken aback or try to shush them for just one more day.

(The blog posts and novel chapters alone are calling out so loudly for attention that I can barely hear the delicate strains of Metallica's chipper little ditty, "Cyanide".)

Yet, in the wide open aftermath of preparation, excitement, chaos, and churning, it is oddly easy to still be stunned. Surpassed expectations and notted shoulds are tangled together inextricably, watching us flounder in a drowning pool of normal. The life buoys bobbing all around seem more like lead weights, all clamoring for attention at once after their long, impatient wait.

Me, I don't know where to begin. I only know that I must, and that's the loudest whiner in the lot.

When the event's work is done, the desire to savor the taste of its success is so powerful that the temptation is to ask normal to hold on, just a little longer. Just one more remembering smile, just one more toast, just one more minute of dreamless sleep—so long denied in preparation for what now seems a dream itself. But that knight's shield was never solid to begin with, and nothing set aside ever really accepts a denigrated status, no matter how temporarily.

The aftermath was here all along, really.**

*For paranoid privacy reasons, I can't tell you all about the event in which I've just participated. But I can say that it was wonderful—it grew from seed to sprout to sprawling blossoms with a wild beauty that belied its careful cultivation. And I am just so glad to have been a part of it, even if it is a little jarring to see, now piercing through the autumnal glory of The Big Event That Shall Remain Nameless, an unnatural fluorescent orange highlighting of all the other projects that were more-or-less hidden there.

**Get back to work, me!

The Best Valentine's Day Ever

2009-02-21T19:00:00.002Z

Little Girl has always loved Valentine's Day—in the interests of complete disclosure, a holiday that sports her favored pink as a featured color would have an automatic leg up on any other—so perhaps that's why her extra bonus excitement this year didn't quite register with me.

"I can't wait for Valentine's Day!" she'd say, and on many occasions, starting shortly after she returned to school following the Christmas holidays.

Alternating amused "I know—that's your favorite!" comments with gentle "I know, but don't wish these in-between days away!" chidings, I mostly chalked Little Girl's Valentine's bubbliness up the tradition of exchanging cards and candy, and those legendary cookies that one of her classmates always brought, frosted thick and personalized with each child's name written on top in even more frosting.

In short, I missed all the signs that something big was about to happen.

When the week of the precious pink holiday finally rolled around, it was heralded by a sloppy mess of melting slush that was almost delightful, having been preceded by many weeks of harsh, heavy snow, and cold so bitter that seemed to creep inside each and every cell, determined to freeze you solid from the inside out. After braving a yard that approached quicksand in its tendency to suck deep and leech-like at whatever touched its surface, I arrived that Monday evening to pick up Little Girl from my parents' home and didn't even notice the package until Little Girl pointed it out to me.

"That's for YOU, Mommy! And I decorated it!"

With my attention thus diverted from the evidence of deceptively Spring-like weather—coated all over my shoes—by Little Girl's words and helpfully pointing finger, I duly admired the package not two feet from me on the floor. It was about the size of a large box of cereal that had been tipped over, but I did not spare much thought to what might be inside, and would not have dreamed of hazarding a guess to the packages contents, even if I had been trying to determine them.

(If you guess right, you disappoint the gift-giver by ruining the surprise, and if you guess wrong, the gift-giver presumes your disappointment when you discover what the contents actually are. Better not to guess at all, or if you do, be as ridiculous as possible, à la "Oh my goodness! However did you get a hippopotamus into such a small package?")

The box was wrapped in white tissue paper, and adorned with construction-paper hearts in red, purple, and—of course—pink, which fluttered here and there like butterflies, and also clustered into some very interesting configurations.

"I like this one!"

"That's very cool!" I agreed, nodding at the triskelion formed by three of the hearts. "Do I get to open it now?"

But that mild question was heartily DENIED from all thirds, and I was informed I would have to wait until the end of the week. Or maybe Wednesday.

When Wednesday eventually arrived—as Wednesdays are wont to do, about once a week—it was only after a package-focused Tuesday that further hyped the as-yet unrevealed contents of the box. And I still didn't get the significance of Little Girl's extreme excitement, or my parents' secretive smiles behind her. It wasn't that I wasn't interested ... only that, in retrospect, I really should have been so intrigued that it kept me awake at night—that's the level of fascination that the package was due.

(Does it count that my insomnia kept me up?)

Anyway, circumstances being what they were, I was informed that Wednesday, February 11, was the designated Opening Day after all, and then a carefully choreographed ceremony commenced. My father took photos of the package, my mother brought me a chair to sit in—the carpet in their home still being new enough to retain a certain level of sacredness, and me wearing boots coated with a layer of last year's lawn being therefore forbidden from treading upon it—and Little Girl brought her thrill level to a roiling boil, flitting about with hummingbird-speed, hopped up on the joyous nectar of giving.

I was provided with a letter opener that was not quite up to the task of preserving the heart-flocked tissue paper, but I did my best regardless. Still clueless, I nevertheless have great and enduring respect for a most excellent wrapping job, and it really was very lovely.

Once I'd divested it of its holiday finery, I flipped over the package—still incognito: I recognized the box as several-times gift-recycled and therefore incapable of providing a useful clue to the identity of the contents. I abandoned the unsharp letter opener in favor of the simple efficiency of popping open the re-taped top with my bare hands—it just seemed more prudent than daintily sawing my way inside the package with a tool that might, it seemed to me, not do all that well cutting room-temperature butter.

(Nothing against your letter opener, Mom, honest! I'm just exaggerating for comedic effect, and to prolong this part of the story a wee, tension-building moment more. Right, then. On with the show—this is it!)

My audience was quiet as I unfolded the orchid of a box to reveal the pearls within—I'd be willing to bet they were all grinning, too, though I don't exactly know—the first item, while it certainly looked familiar, didn't quite pop the thick bubble of obtuseness that enclosed me. It was a book, and as I picked it up, trying to place where I'd last seen it, the friendly face of a companion book peered up at me, and I remembered, and felt grateful tears pucker up along the spillways of my eyes ...

Just weeks earlier, after all the Christmas debris was disposed of and the obligatory holiday appearances had been made, Little Girl's daddy caught the cleaning bug, and let it fester until he was so thoroughly infected that there was no hope of avoiding the plague for Little Girl and me.

As his basement cleaning led to the attic—because to make room in the basement, he had to send more stuff to the attic, and then the attic excess had to go somewhere (or just GO)—the house grew disastrously cluttered. And as the bulk of the attic overflow was deemed "mine" (by virtue, I think, of having nothing to do with hunting, fishing, or other manly ventures), I had to venture into the cleaning maelstrom, or risk losing some treasure or other amidst the miscellaneous heaps of generic "stuff".

That such tasks were the very ruination of my lazy dreams for my holiday vacation was bad enough. I was not cushioned in pillows and snuggled in blankets, eating hot, buttery popcorn while watching America's Next Top Model reruns—oh no! Rather, I was sorting baby clothes for charity, arranging and labeling camping gear, and determining which of the superfluous Christmas decor might actually be used one day, thereby determining its rank and file position in the gradient of attic accessibility.

But when I opened the plastic tub of treasured books from my formative years—books for which no bookshelves had existed when we moved into our current home—I did not find the expected smooth covers and pages, their once-crisp edges gently polished from repetitive, glorious reading. Instead, I saw chewed and gnawed and mouse-nested schnibbles. I smelled a history of mouse lives, heavily perfumed with nausea-inducing ammonia.

And I heard myself not crying, because crying wouldn't have covered the immutable break in the chain that linked me to childhood dreams, escapes, and reminiscences. My books were my talismans—things which, by mere sight and simple touch, reconnected me to my past—and they possessed the near-miraculous ability to reignite memories so old that I'd forgotten they'd ever so much as sparked. Finding my books—never "just" books to me—vandalised and abused, neglected and destroyed ... well, mere "crying" wasn't enough in the shock of discovery.

So I did not cry—I sobbed. I mourned and I grieved, as is necessary after any loss. But the stench of past vermin infestation added an urgency to the need for putting this horrible episode behind me. And as I bagged my books and tried to convince myself that they were, personal attachment aside, only "things", after all, I did not notice that Little Girl had hatched a plan, then and there.

I sat with the box of books on my lap and listened in dazed wonder as Little Girl explained—and my parents filled in the jubilant gaps she left behind her as she leapfrogged along in the tale—how she had made a list of the books she could see I was most saddened to lose. And how she'd given that list and a wad of her saved money to my parents the next time she saw them, asking them to help her find these books—some of which were years out of print.

While I'd been too overwhelmed by my curdled mouse-shitty attic surprise, Little Girl had started an act of empathetic kindness—and seen it through germination to fruition, with a little help from my parents (and used book sellers on Amazon.com). Just as my old-favorite books were more to me than printed pages and stamped covers, her gift was more than mere restoration of my treasures—it was a picture worth countless words, it was love in tangible form, and it was the definition of how she is, already, the person I once only dreamed she would become.

I put the books Little Girl gave me into a newly-cleared space on the lone shelf in my bedroom. And to remind myself that a story is always more precious than the paper it is written on—or any object-links to it—I'm putting this story on my blog.

With her actions, my sweet Little Girl has written it just right.

Letting Go

2009-02-07T12:46:00.001Z

For two days in a row, I awoke with my novel so thoroughly permeated throughout my brain that it had punctuated my dreams. The first day, it was the next step in the plot that had resolved during the night; the second day, it was a single phrase of text—a line I have not yet quite caught up to in the story (I do have it in sight now).

I usually wake up in a state of stupor, jerked from effectively dreamless sleep—I'm told that sleep is rarely truly free of dreams, but I seldom recall my own—to a ostensibly wakeful state by the cacophonous morning riot generated by my deceptively dignified-looking alarm clock. The arrhythmia-provoking noise is the only way I can dependably roust myself from the cozy cocoon of blankets in which I spend the dark hours in peaceful oblivion, yet the sudden about-face of silence is sharp and painful.

But for two days—two marvelous days—I awoke alert and glad of the auditory chaos, because my mind was clinging to the story with tight little fists, and shimmering with delight. I got out of bed so fast on the second day that I wasn't entirely certain whether I'd turned the alarm off, or simply snoozed it; I had to tiptoe back into the bedroom to check, lest I be interrupted by feral growls and irate alarm-beating from Little Girl's daddy, should the alarm explode again, seven snoozy minutes after I'd hushed it. All the while, I was thinking not of the earliness of the hour, the chill of the floor, or the trials of the day—I was concentrated like a frozen can of juice, all intense and flavorful with words as my fruit.

Okay, so maybe the cold got to me a little after all.

I have not been consciously cognizant of the overall plot of my novel—not even key points of it—from the start. And while I have become aware of some important happenings over the course of writing, there is still so much I don't know. For me to write this story more often requires a letting go more than a tuning in or a holding on, so these two mornings where the station was subconsciously preset during my unconscious hours, it was a surprise and relief—as if I'd managed to give myself just the exact gift I'd needed, without having the slightest idea of so doing. I felt like I'd reached some delicious new height, or advanced to a precocious new level in my writing life.

Not to say that my plot twisted in a contortion so clever and remarkable that it would be sure to impress anyone who read it—nothing like that. The plot didn't perform any gymnastic stunts at all, but it did advance. The second day's phrase* is not likely to win any prizes, either, though its verbatim clarity propelled the story along just as surely as the dream idea had, and across a greater distance, too.

My brush with what I perceived to be truly effortlessly story development was not finished with me on the third day, even though I awoke to old stupor rather than new enlightenment. In the absence of dream-spawned creativity, I was reminded of the importance of simply writing—writing without any inspiration other than the innate need of writing ... writing like it was a reflex instead of an effort ... writing like breathing. It's easy to believe the two are more than cousins when you're in the thrall of your story—in the lives of your characters. It doesn't have to be perfect then, or great, or even read at all. It just as to BE, and you are the only one who can breathe it into existence.

As much as I enjoyed feeling like I knew just what to write for those two days, I can also appreciate the freedom of writing straight out of mind and onto paper—or an electronic facsimile thereof. It's something I am surprised to be able to do at all, given my chronic habit of overthinking just about everything, and while I practiced it with my writing group, its roots are in the same, simple mantra that I learned in the sixth grade from a succinct and wise teacher: "Write, write, write!"

Carefully planned, openly channeled, or simply dreamed, it all comes down to writing. So take a deep breath and let go.

* "... all the things—named and unnamed—that sat between them ..."

The Mystery of The Little Pink Things

2009-01-18T18:05:00.003Z

There have been strange things happening here. More specifically, there have been strange things appearing here—on the floor, mostly, but also on chairs, beds, and once, on the bathmat.

I didn't think much of it at first. One freaky little thing manifesting its weirdness in this house doesn't much impress me. But after I disposed of the first one, I found another. And another. And another. And then I lost count.

They're not very big ... they're only around the size of my pinky fingernail:

They're not very threatening, either, these small pink THINGS—for lack of a better word—but they do seem to be plentiful. The photo only shows one, but I assure you, we have seen many more than that.

In fact, after several weeks of distracted, minor annoyance at the odd infestation, I finally did manage to surmise the origin of the little pink things, and I can now say with confidence that they will cease and desist from popping up hither and yon. Oh yes, they will, for there are only twenty-four of them in total.

What I'm wondering, my dear imaginary friends, is if you can guess their origin from this clue—the one that enabled me to solve the mystery and win my Scooby snack?

If you still don't know, don't feel bad ... even with the insider information that he possessed—which is the knowledge that Santa delivered six of the preceding clues to FRISKitty, and another six to Baby Cat—Little Girl's daddy was not able to correctly identify the strange little pink things that had sprouted up all across our home's landscape.

Indeed, he had not actually noticed any of them. *sigh*

But he did condescend to help illustrate the resolution of the mystery for the benefit of anyone who has managed to read this blatheringly far:

Yes, it appears that either FRISKitty or BabyCat (or both) has a little bit of a Mike Tyson problem going on here.

I think I'm going to start sleeping with the blankets pulled over my head.

The Evolution of Christmas

2008-12-28T23:14:00.003Z

I've been doing a little light reading lately—during my glorious, glorious holiday/personal vacation from Corporate (except for daily e-mail checks, because my counterparts in China do not suffer the shackles of national holidays ... not Christmas, anyway)—and it's been weighing a little heavy upon me. It seems that not only is the "Keep Christ in Christmas" crowd batting at us ~~godless heathens~~ non-like-minded souls with piñata-style enthusiasm, but there's another stick-carrying crowd that I never even imagined would be wanting to get in on the beating.

Yes, there is some unquantified—but vocal!—proportion of atheists who don't think other atheists have any business dressing up an evergreen at or around the four-days-post-Winter-Solstice mark, and/or feasting with family and friends. Because, you see, it's hypocrisy for any atheist to partake in a holiday—aka "holy-day", if anyone's keeping score—that is, at its very deepest core, religious in nature.

It's an interesting proposition, because I have felt increasingly at odds with Christmas myself, despite never having once celebrated it as the Christian Savior's appointed Birth day, or even as the pagan/heathen celebration it was before that. Indeed, before achieving adulthood, I spent an astounding lack of time pondering any original facet of the "Christmas" my family traditionally celebrated, and why should I have? Christmas as I knew it was entirely secular, and the fact that many a Christmas song spoke of Christ Jesus, magi, mangers, and even "Heavenly Peace" fazed me not at all* ... Christmas—at least in my home—had continued to evolve, and does to this day.

Origins are important, of course. They teach us what things were once and thereby allow us a better understanding of what they have become. The "roots" of everything from family trees to holidays are vitally important, for they support the above-ground structures which we recognize today, and clearly we would not have those various blossoms without the strength and depth of their roots.

At the same time, variation—something that is not always cultivated—happens without regard for the wishes of those who cling to what they recognize and accept. For better or for worse, Christmas has largely usurped its predecessor holy days, and has also managed to assimilate many of their symbols: evergreens, mistletoe and holly, and wreaths, to name a few. This is nothing new, and not even necessarily malevolent—to the victor go the spoils, as they say, and Christmas is clearly the winning December holiday ... at least for now.

Personal opinion aside, it is a readily observable fact that not even rocks remain pristine and constant, so why should a holiday be any different? Do we celebrate New Year's as they once did in the bygone pre-giant-descending-ball days? Well, not having the foggiest notion what a New Year's Eve celebration might entail, if not watching the dropping of a giant disco ball, I really can't answer this, but the salient question remains: Why, despite her origins, should Christmas be exempted from the dreaded "change" that saturates all other aspects of existence?

The secularization of Christmas that so irks the fundamentalist Christians being simultaneously argued as holy in spite of itself by the fundamentalist atheists is so utterly ironic that it could rust down to dust. Yet, both sides are quite serious and apparently unaware of the abundantly ferric nature of their expressions, and both persist in touting the absolute rightness of their polar opposing standpoints while standing every possible chance of missing the whole point.

Times change, and so do people, as do our expressions of that which is holy or merely good. An atheist celebrating Christmas is no more hypocritical than a Christian decorating a tree—both are equally intent on a celebration of that which is important, and the fact that their definitions of the meaning of "Christmas" differ speaks not at all to relative truth, but rather directly to absolute truth: Christmas is not just for Christians, any more than an ornamented evergreen is just for Druids.

Regardless of how anyone feels about how anyone else is (or is not) celebrating Christmas, here in the United States, we can celebrate (or not) as we choose ... may this one day be true for everyone, everywhere.

* It might have helped a wee bit that the most often-played Christmas records in the home of my childhood were sung entirely in German—in which Mom was fluent, but in which I have never learned to understand.

Nothing More Than Feelings

2008-12-15T13:16:00.000Z

There's nothing quite like getting your teeth drilled to turn your focus inward. Because, seriously, what would you rather consider: the fact that pulverized bits of your molars are flying out of your mouth while the latex-wrapped mitts of two strangers are stuck uncomfortably near your gag reflex, or the possibility that you're internalizing your stress so badly that you're wearing down the surface of your teeth to the point that they require this treatment?

Hmm. Upon reflection, neither one of these ponderances sounds even remotely appealing.

That's probably why I wound up pondering the power of feelings. It was actually the lack of sensation in my jaw—which, throughout the redrilling and refilling process, spread into my lips (with my complete support, 'cause there's a very good reason I'm listed in the charts as requiring an extra dose of numbing agent ... if the dentist doesn't give me one right away, he has to cease and desist drilling when I GRAB HIS ARM TO MAKE HIM STOP BECAUSE IT HURTS LIKE A SONOFABITCH)—that fired the engine on my train of thought. Because even though, at the ripe old age of 40, I understood full well that my lips were not physically swelling and bulging in unnatural ways, I still took the opportunity—when the dentist paused to change drill bits—to check. My "feeling" that my lips were malforming and bloating was simply too powerful to ignore, and it trampled right over the delicate springbok of reason.

Aside from the irony that lack of physical sensation is what convinced me, at some sub-basement level of consciousness, that my internal notion was more correct than the reality of the situation (and my own past experience), this hypnotic power that a "feeling"—if it's strong enough—has to trump all else really does explain a lot about the world in general. Behaviors which might otherwise seem irrational are very neatly comprehensible when you understand the POWER of the FEELING.

(Bonus points to anyone who heard those last six syllables in James Earl Jones/Darth Vader's voice.)

But what I was not able to resolve in my mercifully brief time caught in the glare of the dentist's headlight was what inspires us to let our feelings—particularly those which we know have led us astray in the past—steamroller over common sense at all? I didn't consciously consider the fact that I was behaving in a completely ridiculous way when I prodded at my sensation-reduced lip with my equally-thick tongue, but that still doesn't make it a reasonable thing to do. Obviously, I suppose.

If I had stopped to seriously consider what I was doing, I might very well have called myself a name that would have made the dentist blush. (Not that I would have gotten to enjoy the sight, considering that he was, of course, hiding behind one of those tree-murder-dependent scary-ass blue paper masks that are so VERY not anyone's color.) But then again, "feelings"—intuition, gut instincts, hunches, or whatever else we choose to call them—frequently win seemingly impossible bouts against reason, so adding a few more minutes to the match hardly sounds like the panacea the logicians among us might purport it to be.

(Pretzel logicians excepted, of course.)

Perhaps the deciding factor has less to do with the strength of our feelings and our capacity for reason than it does with simple math and geography. When our instinct and logic align, it's an easy sum to figure, but when feelings and reason conflict, the deeply internal "gut" is closer to whatever it is that we define as "me" than the peripheral brain, rattling around on the end of ourselves like a Tootsie-Pop with an atrophied, shrunken core. Relying on instinct—when you think of it that way, bolstered through evolutionary ages of making the call on "flight or fight" (not, as my sticky "R" key would have you believe, "flight or frrrrright"—is not, after all, the new kid on this particular block ... that dubious title belongs to reason.

In any case—trust issues included—what I learned from my illogical actions at the dentist's office at least supports—and at best fully convicts—the notion that feelings are nothing to be depreciated. For better or for worse, they've got a Kryptonite-like power over us, which we ignore at our own peril.