Moodiness
I have days of inexplicable gloom.
I can try to explain it, but language (supposedly "my thing") even fails me and everything sounds trite and whiny. When it goes this far, I can be quite a Qohelet: "Everything is meaningless. What does [wo]man gain from all h[er] labor at which [s]he toils under the sun?"
Then the sun rises again, and I soar upward with David: "The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance."
This Sunday and Monday came one of the worst such phases I've seen. And today is one of the best recoveries.
Why?
True friends stick around even though they don't know what to say to my Qohelet; they refrain from showing irritation by my David. I'm pretty impressed that I have any friends. Maybe they're just junkies for the excitement my moodiness offers, or maybe they've just mastered the golden rule. I know
I sure don't enjoy hanging around human seismographs, but I still want to have sympathetic people available at all times.
So here's a shout out to my homies; if you didn't know you were paragons of
agape, you're hereby notified. Please don't file this one with the fuzzy email forwards.
And always remember your own homies when you thank the Author of Every Good and Perfect Gift.
The Slave Trade Is Alive and Well
"Beware department heads bearing gifts." - Debby
We were given another stack of grading the other day: Optimist Club essays (which were not very good) written by high schoolers. We were paid in truffles (which were very good) and department head approval (which is also very good).
How little and yet how much in life do we have to choose! I had no choice but to grade the papers, yet I did choose to obey my boss, yet if I want to go on living as I have, I had better obey my boss, yet no one told me I must go on living as I have.
Uh oh, I think I have stumbled a little too far into free-will territory. If you follow these questions back (I suppose if you follow any questions back) you get a little philosophical.
Maybe my proclivity to procrastinate is a latent rebellion against the inhibition of choice caused by choices I've already made and the ones I hope to make in the future.
[what?] I don't want to be a slave to the system, and the system is largely of my own making. Overcommitment anonymous, here I am! Guys? Anyone?
On a less important note, have you ever noticed...
...how it's much easier to catch a ride with someone
out of Stephenville than
in?
...how big a difference shoe choice makes in how comfortably and covertly one can descend stairs?
...how "simple" and "easy" are rarely the same thing?
No Turning Back
I hate options. That is one of the reasons I can see myself not living in America my whole life. We Americans cannot live without our options; if the only Hickory-Smoked (flavored) Lays (TM) we can find are the low-salt ones, we throw a fit. I know I have done so about some things.
Wouldn't a life of necessity be easier? If we were hunter-gatherers and I had to spend the majority of my day rooting around for food in order to survive, I wouldn't have to make complicated decisions and constantly wonder which was right. Hasn't our new leisure given us freedom for which we are not equipped?
Our small caravan turned back from driving through Oklahoma on Saturday. Those of you who were watching the Weather Channel that morning and who like me and my roommate will breathe a sigh of relief; our path was to lead us through the most treacherous part of the second-most-serious ice storm of the season. We didn't really believe it until we saw wrecks and emergency vehicles at three overpasses in a row. By consensus we turned around.
Two hundred years ago, we would not have had any way to travel such a distance to go to our friends' wedding. It wouldn't have been an option. And now the pain of disappointment accompanies the loss of the option. Who needs it?
Of course, I don't mean this. The same line of reasoning would lead me to say, with Dickinson,
‘Twere better Charity
To leave me in the Atom’s Tomb—
Merry, and Nought, and gay, and numb—
Than this smart Misery.
I guess you still could quite agree with this. But my hope is in a day when this sometimes-horrific spiritual rationality will be healed into a more glorious sensibility than is enjoyed by any other creature on earth. This whole "knowing in part" business can be quite taxing, but the "knowing fully and being fully known" will be infinitely better than knowing nothing at all.
Academese
My heartfelt apologies to those of you (count yourselves blessed) who did not understand my last post, or at least the beginning and the ending thereof. The opening and closing sentences were crude parodies of the kinds of sentences one hears at the academic conference panel; as you hopefully guessed, they do not mean anything.
Some of the buzzwords were straight out of a Cormac McCarthy panel I attended. I wonder sometimes
who is kidding whom; am I not fluent enough in the language to understand the complex ideas being presented, or do the speakers themselves not really know what they are talking about and attempt to
cloak the fact with buzzwords?
I'm sure it goes both ways. Many of these ideas
are too complex to understand after only being heard once. I
do understand three or four times more of that stuff than I did a mere two years ago, but I still refuse to nod and murmur assent when I don't really know what was just said.
Meanwhile, this week will be a grading week. I had just gotten to a balanced time budget and it was a harsh jolt of reality to remember that grading hadn't even made it to the budgeting meeting. Now there's probably going to be some deficit spending.
I have had several great weekends this semester; last week I even had two. I still need more.
Self-Referentiality
I am at an academic conference. The chamelion effect is already taking hold, and I've only been at two sessions so far. The construct of social subjectivity abrogates the self-referential modalities of privileged discourses.....SMACK! Thanks.
Last night, I went to a roundtable discussion about blogging. It was interesting, but not informative. The Ph.Ds who are writing books about the phenomenon had nothing more original to say than "Wow, lots of people are blogging now, and that's different than traditional newspaper journalism!"
No kidding.
The unsurprising conclusion was that blogs, like nearly every other new technological innovation, are an amoral tool. They are a powerful tool, but they are no more good or evil than the typists behind them. For some reason, the idea will not go away that there will someday be an invention that eliminates the need for people to exercise discernment and discipline.
Funny, because I'd say that idea should go
far away.
Or, at least, the assumption of inherent value-judgment should sever affective ties with the bourgeois conception of linearity.
A Room of One's Own
I should probably at least read Virginia Wolff's work before I use her title. Yet I will use it, and without offering any justification but that the phrase has been scrolling through my head all day like a marquee.
It was such a delicious anticipation. I was going to have a hotel room all to myself, far away from anyone who would know or care that I am here. I would lock myself away and do my own things without any supervision or burden of accomplishment. Think of all the reading I could get done!
Oh, it doesn't sound delicious? Well, if you don't know why it's delicious now, then I'm certainly not going to tell you why.
Okay; I'll try.
Exactly one year ago, I stayed in this same hotel (Hotel Blue, Albuquerque, NM) in a room with a single king bed with two other girls I didn't know. I had to walk here late at night after nearly 24 hours awake, but could not sleep because of my anticipation of the former, who did not arrive until the wee hours.
I didn't walk to the hotel alone last time; that was one aspect that did not improve this year. But it heightened the satisfaction of arriving safely at a fourth-floor room (of my own) and locking the world out.
I decided not to expect any work to get done. This conference is my time, for better or for worse. I even economized my packing by bringing very little of anything, let alone work.
And there is still an intangible and mysterious element to this satisfaction; none of the above reasons explains sufficiently why I am more relaxed here than I am at home. Perhaps novelty and departure from norms holds more charm than even I had guessed.
So here I am, sprawled out on one of the only king beds I've ever touched, surrounded by efficient and personality-challenged furniture. My suit for tomorrow's presentation is laid on the floor because I'm hoping not to have to use the complimentary iron. I can hardly wait to use the special little bottle of shampoo tomorrow morning.
Oh, yeah. The reason I'm here. Well, that post will just have to wait.
Humbiliation
I just did karaoke for the first time. Sort of.
I don't even want to talk about the last time. It wasn't really karaoke, but it was the most humiliating experience of my life.
And that's what I want to talk about today. When I got out of high school and went far away to college, I resolved to be like my super-confident big brother and never be humiliated again. Most of the time I was successful, simply laughing at myself when I deserved it and sincerely scorning any negativity about parts of myself I personally liked.
But there was a chink in the armor: the classic "I heard you laughing before I saw you" comment. No matter who says it when, or how good-naturedly it is expressed, I still wince when people tell me that. For a woman with a deep wish to be known for gentleness and selflessness, being known as a good hearty laugher is devastating.
Can I explain why? Not really. But I can expound my theory of humiliation. We are humiliated when:
- a personal attribute of which we are ashamed is called to attention (e.g., laughing loudly)
- opinions we value have the potential to be influenced by misconceptions about us
- we have a particular object of envy and that object does or says anything noteworthy
- an accomplishment of particular pride is eclipsed by another (especially effortlessly)
This is not profound, but it does help me to analyze what I can do about it. The source of all of these humiliations is not set in stone. For one thing, envy and pride are traps about which we are warned over and over; whether we believe it or not, they are our own problem and no one else's. And the only opinion I need to value is the kind which cannot be deceived.
The personal attribute one is one for which I still can't find an answer; perhaps that is why it still gets to me. How can one banish shame when it is at least partially justified?
Perhaps, if you will permit me an arrogant comparison, this is meant to be the thorn in my flesh. It reminds me every day that I am not my own god--or at least I shouldn't be. If I may only choose humbiliation (truly thinking less of myself than of others) rather than humiliation (a sudden turn back to complete self-focus), I probably would benefit from the occasional loud laugh comment.
But no more karaoke. No.
