Get a Haircut and Get a Real Job

Well, it was bound to happen. After a week of going strong with seven consecutive posts, the day I decided I just didn't feel like posting arrived...followed by fourteen more. But at least it was an even two weeks (my brain only functions well with neat, round numbers).

I just don't have a whole lot going on to write about at the moment. For the first significant amount of time since I turned 16 and was forced into my premier job as buffet attendant at a hideous chain restaurant, I am unemployed. It was a conscious choice made to get out of an extremely dysfunctional work environment, and I can honestly say I don't regret it for one moment. I would never recommend quitting a job without having another lined up, but in this instance I know I made the right choice. A huge weight was lifted, if the smaller one of near total poverty was added. I love my night job, but teaching part-time just doesn't pay the bills.

Perhaps this person's teacher should have been paid more...or less.

So I am currently relegated to the world of White Rain shampoo, 59 cent stale store brand bread, and giving up those little luxuries like dryer sheets. I now keep track of my gas mileage and can calculate down to the half gallon how much I will need for the week. Hair appointments and the purchasing of new clothes or makeup have come to a grinding halt. I've started cutting coupons. In short, I have become my mother.

USE COUPONS: You'll carry around wads of fifties and look just like Katie Holmes

And it's actually kind of fun. I sort of like going to the store and seeing how much food I can squeeze out of five dollars. I've started picking up the free Wednesday paper instead of waiting 'til I mow to curse at its unsolicited presence in my yard (not to mention the little game I've been forced to play lately called, "How Long Can I Go Without Mowing and Still Avoid Becoming the Neighborhood Pariah"). I channeled Kramer the other night and (literally) cheered my car on home, praying the gas would hold out and feeling triumphant, like I'd won something, when it did.

"...further to the left of the slash than anyone ever dreamed!"

This isn't to make light of the situations of people who are in true, abject poverty. I'm lucky that I have a nice place to live with a very low amount of bills, and I'm extremely thankful for the small income that I'm still bringing in (not to mention the friends who have helped me along the way, but that's a whole other post). As long as I have a roof over my head, food to eat, and running water, I count myself as pretty well off. I know there are millions of people out there who are truly hurting, and I'm sure they don't think of it as a fun game when they're trying to figure out how to feed their families. But since I only have myself to worry about, I can laugh about the days I've eaten peanut butter out of the jar with a spoon for lunch and two heels of bread and butter for dinner, and I'm thinking maybe I'm in exactly the situation I need to be.

I'm So Tired

When I started this blog, my goal was to write something every day, but...I'm so tired. Enjoy the video. You'd better, because as Paul puts it, "It's the bloody Beatles White Album, shut up..."

Don't Have to Live like a Refugee

When teaching non-native English speakers, there's always the occasional laugh or awkward exchange; for instance, my students couldn't stop giggling the other night when I kept saying "sheet" (as in "worksheet") since they would instinctively pronounce a similar word with a long "e" rather than a short "i." But on Monday, I had a more sobering encounter with words.

We were practicing introductions and talking about yourself, which included a video and worksheet packet entitled "Immigrants and Refugees Tell Their Stories." The video told the story of Biba, a refugee from Bosnia now living in Chicago. When I handed out the accompanying worksheets, one student asked the meaning of "refugee." Since my class has been together for a year now, they're pretty comfortable with me and each other, and don't hesitate to speak out when they know the answer or can help another student. Before I even got the chance to begin to explain, the entire class broke out in a cacophony of Spanish, explaining what a refugee was to the one student who didn't know. He quickly got the message, and not one student asked why someone would have to refugee. They already knew.

This may not seem that remarkable, but knowing my class and some of the things I have to explain, it made quite an impression on me. There are many cognates in Spanish and English that are seemingly self-explanatory that I still  have to define for them. But I was clearly not needed in this case. Biba, the woman in the video, spoke very simple English and could only describe the situation in her country by saying her home was "broken." I explained to them that this meant much more than the simple term used, and I got the nods of comprehension that every teacher longs for and many times doesn't get, not because I'm a great teacher, but, again, because they already knew.

I don't know most of my students' personal immigration/refugee stories, and it's not my job to ask. My job is to teach them the language so they can carry on their lives here as well as possible. Many times during class, tears well up in my eyes when I see someone trying their hardest or when a struggling student suddenly "gets" something. I know other kinds of teachers have the same experiences, but as an ESL teacher, I think it hits me so hard because I know some of the prejudices and obstacles they have to face that we as natural born citizens just can't understand, and to watch them work so hard when I know there are people out there who direct a lot of negativity toward them just kills me.

I would challenge anyone who has anything nasty to say about "those people" who "need to learn English" to come to my class just once. Watch them rush in, of their own free will, dog tired after a twelve hour day at a factory, to sit in a classroom for three hours. Ask them about their families who are at home while they're in class. Listen to them speak to me as respectfully as they would their boss, or their mother. Look at the presents they've bought me, when some can barely afford a notebook for class. See them help me clean up the classroom without being asked. Hear them say "Thank you, Teacher," after each and every class. Talk to my student who just earned citizenship how much money and time it cost her.

I know that some people come here and aren't productive members of society. So are a large percentage of the people who supposedly have the "right" to be here. There are leeches and losers in every corner of this world. I just wish that more people would judge individuals on their own merit, not by the actions of other members of their ethnic group. Or how about we just stop judging each other at all? I know I have enough of my own problems to worry about than whether or not someone else is holding up their end of the bargain. The next time you see someone in a store struggling to get the words out, instead of looking disdainfully at them, try helping them. And if you don't feel they deserve it, the next thing you should be doing is picking up a book and learning a new language for yourself, so you can see just how easy it is.

My surprise birthday cake- with peaches!

You're the One

"...In spite of the care she devoted to each thing she wrote, as soon as it was finished, she cast it behind her with something like contempt, sometimes with rage. Such things were not what she wanted at all. But what did she want? In a different culture, perhaps, she would have been happier..."

-Ted Hughes, from his foreword to The Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1982

The cover of my edition of the journals; notice one side the words, one side the woman...

For anyone who desires to do any kind of writing, it's disheartening to read someone like Sylvia Plath. Even her journals are poetic. Knowing her history, you might want to go in thinking that her entries will be overwrought, melodramatic, or, in the parlance of our times, "emo." Although they're certainly self-absorbed and maudlin at times, they're unflinchingly real and relatable.

As evidenced in Hughes' quote, Plath struggled to find her voice as a writer. This effort suffered from her desire to be published and popular. She often had to tailor or temper her natural style and content to produce what publications wanted. Hughes even went so far as to claim that all but Ariel and the later poems, along with her journals, were the only representation of her true "voice," and that all her other writings were the "waste products" left along the way to finding that voice.

Sylvia and Ted (AKA Bill Pullman's twin)

It's somewhat encouraging that even a literary genius like Plath suffered from those insecurities and produced pieces that were less than representative of both herself and what she was truly capable of as a writer. Hughes explains:

"A real self, as we know, is a rare thing. The direct speech of a real self is rarer still. Where a real self exists it reveals itself, as a rule, only in the quality of a person's presence, or in actions. Most of us are never more than bundles of contradictory and complementary selves. Our real self, if our belief that we have one is true, is usually dumb, shut away beneath the to-and-fro conflicting voices of the false and petty selves. As if dumbness were the universal characteristic of the real self. When a real self finds language, and manages to speak, it is surely a dazzling event-as Ariel was."

It's important to note that Hughes uses the word "dumb" not in the modern sense that we would, but to mean "mute" as was a common understanding of the word in his generation. He's saying that our true selves are silent, and only once in a great while can that silence find an authentic voice and be shown to the rest of the world. It seems that to get by in a society, to get along with others, we must be "false and petty." I find this to be true, particularly in the American culture. Every time I wrote a journal entry when I was younger, I did it with the notion in mind that someday, someone would read it. I was afraid to write anything too "true," too real. I found myself tempering everything about what I wrote, from the technique to the content, out of fear of being "found out." The writing wasn't true to me, but I was afraid to show "me," anyway, so into the garbage it all went.

Tell me about it.

I don't believe a blog is the place to find your voice as a writer, unless your goal is only that of being a successful blogger. Your audience is too wide and untargeted; it probably includes friends and family who may all have you in a certain, different "niche" in their brains, and when you try to write to please everyone, you probably end up pleasing yourself least of all. I've doubted and questioned myself over and over since starting this blog, and I find that the more I write, the less I care what people think of it, as long as it is serving a purpose for me. That sounds selfish, but everything we do in this world is a selfish act. Even when we help others, it often makes us feel just as good as the person we're helping, which is fine. When we have some sort of release or just spend a little time doing something we enjoy, the happier we feel and the more good energy we can put out into the world. You're the only one you really have to please, and you'll never please anyone else if your happiness isn't your first priority.
[Cue end of cliche]

Even Plath wore a bikini

Greener Grass

It's a beautiful day in Southwest Missouri. I have a hankering (yes, hankering) to go to Wildcat Park. For my few international readers, and for those of you who live here that aren't aware, we have a wonderful treasure there just south of Joplin.Wildcat Park is beautiful, peaceful, clean, and best of all, free. It encompasses Wildcat Glades, which is home to the largest remaining chert glade in the world. I unfortunately had to Google "chert glade" myself, and no, I will not do the work for you by explaining what I found. That's the teacher in me. But, suffice it to say, it's pretty cool and helps explain why, around here, we sometimes have to pay kids to pick up rocks on our land and why they often find arrowheads while doing so.

Shoal Creek, below Grand Falls, the only continuously running waterfall in Missouri

 I went to Wildcat Park a few weeks ago, and it was my first time there since the Audubon Center had opened. I could see the building in the distance, but surrounding it was what looked like untamed wilderness. I thought and said aloud, "Why wouldn't they keep the grounds around the building maintained?" I then, of course, felt pretty stupid when the obvious answer was explained to me, which is that the grounds aren't neglected; they are part of the conservation efforts to preserve the land in its natural state. Living in a country where everything is so commercialized, shiny, and plastic, it was refreshing to see a place like this that was so untouched yet still so accessible to the public.

On the banks of Shoal Creek

 While at Wildcat, we saw families swimming, couples walking, people biking, and a photographer shooting family portraits. It was refreshing to see so many people in one place essentially enjoying the same thing and coexisting peacefully. Everyone was on their own, but still together, in a way. So today, instead of grumbling that I can't be somewhere else like London or Paris, I think I'm going to go enjoy what I've got right here.

Bridge over untroubled water

Turn it Off

If you spend any time with me at all, you know that I still have a flip phone. It has no camera, no internet, no apps, and has a T9 keypad that I can use without looking. I've come close to following the crowd in joining 21st century technology, but really, my phone does everything I need. If you know me, you also know that I tend not to answer my phone and I communicate primarily through text. I despise small talk, uncomfortable silences, and pointlessness, all of which most phone calls seem to have. Text gets the job done, plans made, information relayed, etc. I'd rather have a face-to-face conversation if we're going to talk about anything real. But much like handwritten letters, the art of conversation has been sacrificed to the god of technology.

Having drinks with some old friends last night reminded me of how satisfying it is to actually sit down with people and look them in the eye, to truly hear them and have them hear you, and talk about what's really going on in your lives. This is part of the reason why I initially got off facebook. People thought something was wrong and I even got a few frantic texts and phone calls asking if I was ok, all because it seemed so inconceivable that someone would disconnect in that way. In reality, I was just sitting there one night, mindlessly bored, reading people's posts, and I just got fed up. It seemed that so many people were using it to try to prove how great their lives were, air their drama and dirty laundry, or, frankly, just posting idiotic garbage. All of the sudden the whole thing seemed like the most gigantic waste of time that I could possibly conceive of, and I made the snap decision to be rid of it. I'm sure I sound self-righteous, but if you notice, I'm now back on it.

...Yes, I couldn't stay away. After a few weeks, I started to miss hearing some of the updates on friends that I don't necessarily get to see all the time. I've heard people say that social networks like facebook are stupid because if you really wanted to stay in touch with someone, you would have in the first place. In fact, this is something I used to say myself before joining. But after making some of the connections and reconnections I've made through FB, I've realized its value.

Although I do miss the days of getting handwritten letters in the mail, the spontaneity of not knowing who's calling when the phone rings, and the excitement of rushing home to check the machine to see if you got that phone call you were waiting for, technology has also made it possible to connect and reconnect with people that you otherwise might not have. Not because you didn't want to, or didn't care about them, but because as we get older, our lives get busier, more complicated, and more compartmentalized. We have to pare things down. We can't spend hours on the phone with the person we just left an hour ago like we did in junior high. And we don't want to or need to, but we do need to stay connected even if some of us have to fight our hermit natures to do so :) Bearing that in mind, however, technology can also disconnect us from each other. Please heed Stevie's plea to "turn it off" once in a while and also enjoy hearing her call Bob Dylan a crazy person.

"Great balls of fire! Don't bother me anymore, and don't call me sugar."

This month is Vivien Leigh month over on TCM. I think she's the most beautiful women in film history; maybe the most beautiful woman that has ever existed, and Scarlett is my all-time favorite movie character. I probably identify a little too much with her tantrums and attitude. When I was a little girl, I was so proud that I could raise my eyebrow just like Scarlett right before she throws her parasol on the floor and gets down to eating her breakfast so she won't "gobble like a hog" at the Wilkes' barbecue.

The "Eyebrow"

Gone With the Wind gets a bad rap for racism and sexism, and probably rightly so. But I give it a pass for being made in 1939, when the world was very different. There's just something special about it that I can't deny. It's probably largely because it's part of some of my earliest memories of my mom and the love of it is one of the few things we've always shared. She named me after Ms Leigh, so I know it's held a place in her heart since she was a girl, too.

I have more family ties with the movie. Back in the mid-nineties, my Grandpa Jack was the first in my family to really get into computers. He had internet access long before we even started thinking about it. He was always showing us newfangled stuff like "email" and "chat rooms," and was savvy enough to start internet shopping at a time when it was really just taking off. 

For my eighteenth birthday, I received a card with a small color print-out inside of Rhett and Scarlett's iconic "kiss" when she agrees to marry him. The card informed me that I would be receiving a piece of the original film (from the cutting room floor I'm sure, back when it was literally a "cutting room"). A few weeks later, the tiny strip of film, encased in glass and matted with the photo below, showed up in the mail. To this day, it's my most prized possession. I have no idea if it's even worth any money, and it doesn't matter. Grandpa Jack died just a few years later, and every time I look at that frame it always reminds me of what true thoughtfulness really is.

Clark's hair is very shiny

 ...But wait, there's more! If you're still with me, you'll now get to hear about the time my step-dad spent hours taping off both parts of the movie onto VHS (this was back when it cost about $75 to purchase) for my 16th birthday. My step-dad and I were not the best of friends at the time, to put it mildly, so this gesture meant a lot. Although I now have the real copies on both VHS and DVD, I'll always treasure that old VHS tape with the handwritten message on the white Memorex sticker.

Ostensibly, the point to all this rambling is that TCM (Turner Classic Movies) is airing the full movie, including the overture and intermission scores, at 7:00 Central time on Tuesday the 14th. If you don't watch TCM regularly, you should. They air all the classics, along with little-known gems and tons of documentary style features on actors, directors, and the films themselves. Every month they have a "Star of the Month" where they play all of that person's films and have other famous people blather on about them. They also air every movie completely commercial-free. It's great. So that's my plug, and if you've never seen GWTW, now's your chance. It's a huge piece of film and a little piece of my history.

"I saw it in the window and I just couldn't resist..."

On Writing*

Oh, everyone just has to have a blog, don't they? I felt like a rebel when I deleted my facebook account, but really, I'm still a follower at heart. I don't miss facebook, but I do miss having some sort of outlet for writing. When I was in school, it was, well, school, and when I was working a job where I communicated through email almost all day, every day, it was....writing emails, all day, every day. Now that I'm jobless but thankfully not homeless I have fewer opportunities to write, or, at least, less inclination. You'd think it would be the opposite, but the truth is that the less you have to do the less you seem to get done, at least in my world.

Stephen King supposedly sets himself a writing quota for each day and sits there until he fills it, whether it's usable or not. Not that I'm at all comparing myself to him, and some English professors I have known would shudder at the thought. But I revere King as a writer as much as I revere my college adviser, the smartest and hardest working woman I've known to date. She shares King's philosophy that, "the road to hell is paved with adverbs," and I've been trying to stop paving my path ever since. See, I love adverbs, or at least have a tendency to use them excessively (exactly). Sometimes I even catch myself using two in a row and I have to stop and ask myself, "What would Dr. B. think?" I usually (!) come to the conclusion that she would call it lazy writing, and that she would be right.

In any case, I have gotten lazy about writing and communication in general, and I feel like my brain has slowly turned to mush since college. I sometimes look back and read some of the papers I wrote and can't fathom how those thoughts and words ever came out of my head and onto the page. Not that they were anything spectacular; I would call myself an average writer, capable at best, but still it's much more highbrow than anything I could probably write today.

Anyway (another crutch word that I've got to purge), my reasoning behind starting a blog, then, is part communicative outlet and part attempt to keep on writing, no matter how mundane and trite the output may be. I've destroyed every journal I've ever written (except one which I've publicly mocked and used for entertainment among friends) and I'm vowing now to leave this one out in the atmosphere, and hopefully I'll follow through on that promise and not let my ego and insecurity cause me to frantically delete it all one day. And finally, hopefully, prayerfully, it will help me train myself to rid my writing of all these utterly useless adverbs.

*An homage to The King, not plagiarism.