“The Gay Marriage Poll”

Friend voting “no” in the “gay marriage poll” on Facebook: Marriage is a Biblical term used to describe the unity of a MAN and WOMAN under the covering of the Lord our God. Therefore, two men and two women should not have the ability to get “married.” If they want to be “partnered” that is up to them, but in no way should it be considered “marriage”

I had to say something.

Me: No one should be legally married. Everyone should have equal rights.

Friend: and therefore if gays want marriage, then they are accepting the fact that the term and meaning of marriage is spiritual and that it is rooted in the Bible, which is the word of GOD.

Me: Legal marriage is completely disconnected from any god. More than a few things need to change for the Biblical argument to be a valid argument.

Friend: “Equal rights” is what is ruining our country and our world. Everyone is so overly sensitive and offended by every little thing, that no one can handle being unique and different.

Friend: Well, Susan, when I married my wife it wasnt for healthcare benefits, legal reasons or the title, it was for the Biblical reason…the way God wanted it to be, so that it is what I based my opinion on…not on what society has made it to be

Me: ‘m not a big fan of marriage(for myself, anyway.) I am a big fan of love, support and caring. I would like to have my relationship viewed as a serious relationship. I’d like to be sure that I’d be able to visit my partner(the father of my son) in the hospital if there was an emergency. I’d like to be included under his health insurance since I  stay at home caring for our child. It would certainly make our taxes easier. These are just a few things that I’d like and I’m positive these are things that many of my friends who are gay would like too.

Friend: I have gay friends too. But mine don’t believe in gay marriage

Me: Lol, I don’t believe in marriage at all as it stands!

We obviously don’t have a lot of common ground here and neither of us are going to change the other’s mind, but I think it’s important to share your opinion when you feel passionately about something.

Friend: absolutely! Love ya girl! Lol!

There.

Was his mind changed? No. Were the seeds of a change planted? Maybe, just maybe, I’d like to think. Who knows, maybe a friend of his who was a little less settled on this line of thinking has seen what I had to say and jumped the fence to my side. Maybe, just maybe…

In the spirit of diplomacy, I left a lot of what I think, believe and know out of this. He didn’t “un-friend” me, so he’ll continue being exposed to my opinion. That can’t be bad.

Here’s to hope and rhetoric.

Things I Am Currently Worried About

In no particular order I am worried about:

Money
Jobs(new, current, other)
Health insurance
The health of my teeth and gums
My parenting
Child care
My weight
My education
What people think of me
My heart
My relationship
Housekeeping
Whether it’s better to stay home or work
Whether or not I’ll have another child
All the things I haven’t read
All the things I haven’t written

Now, I’m going to sleep.

T.V. Rots Your Brain.

We got cable t.v. again this morning. I know, I know… If I purport to love books so much I should be heaping my disdain for television on the couch potato masses instead of shamelessly drooling over the food channel.  I am aware that t.v. rots your brain and turns your muscles to mush, but I love it anyway. 

I blame my mother for my addiction to television. My family didn’t even own a t.v. until I was thirteen and even then I had to drag it into my room and watch “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Saturday Night Live” with the sound down really low and a blanket over me and the t.v. so that no one saw any light under my door. I was horribly deprived. While my friends had the joy of watching “The Simpson’s” and “The Goonies” (on HBO trial weekends) I was relegated to reading The Grapes of Wrath and Sun magazine.

Okay. Mom was right.

But I still love t.v. and I’m not going to set any hard and fast limits because that only ends in failure and tears. I’ll just try to limit myself on a day-to-day basis. Don’t watch too much and don’t watch too much trash. 

I should read The Grapes of Wrath again. And I’m planning on reading David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest this summer (infinitesummer.org) I’ve also got two or three other books that I’ve been reading bit by bit.

Hey, if I read a lot will it cancel out my t.v. watching? I hope so because I’m still going to watch too much “Law & Order”.

A poem a day keeps writer’s block away.

I’ve written very, very little since the end of last semester. I could blame the baby. I could blame work. I’m going to blame myself. 

I know, deep down, that everyone has time to write. And I know, right up on the top, that everyone has time to write at least one poem a day. I’m not saying it has to be a good poem– just a poem–just to get your brain moving. And maybe what you write will turn into a good poem with a little work, but at the very least it gets you writing and thinking.

The word play of poetry is like doing the crossword or the cryptogram: it’s a game and an exercise and it provides very real benefits. Who can argue that the struggling with word choice and rhythm that writing a poem requires doesn’t prime your brain for more writing?  The process of writing a poem can also open doors to things you may want to discuss or explore further.

Richard Hugo, in The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing, instructs that poems have two subjects: the “triggering” subject which gets you writing and the “real or generated subject” which is found in the poem through the writing process.(4) The advice Hugo gives is that if you focus too much on the “Truth” you want to impart or the deep and meaningful thing you want to say you’ll end up with a terrible, forced and superficial poem. If you write about something that moves you, and let go of the deep meaningful junk, the deep and meaningful will shine through. Like your dreams, writing poetry can point you toward the things that you may be subconsciously focusing on–get them out in the open–and, perhaps, inspire more writing.

I’ve done this before–this writing a poem a day–and I can say without reservation that is is a very rewarding and, at the same time, extremely frustrating exercise. Some days were easier than others. Some days I tried harder than I did others. Some days I produced something I thought was beautiful and had potential and other days… well, I tried.

So, here I go again. I started yesterday with a short and silly poem.

Her house is a mess,
She will confess,
But the news is read,
And everyone’s fed,
Some things are important and others are not,
You can’t do without good food and good thought.

Tweet, Tweet

I’ve recently joined Twitter and I’m following a number of famously creative people as well as some not so famously creative people. It’s amazing what can be said and shared in the 140 characters that Twitter allows it’s members.

The more famous people have become a bit more human to me with their sometimes mundane revelations of the work that goes into their success. For instance, I can identify with John Lithgow’s observation that “this writing stuff is hell.” Neil Gaiman spent days in the service of his injured dog–although his star status has been recently reaffirmed by his winning of the Newbery award for “The Graveyard Book.” He’s been tweeting non-stop through dozens of interviews about that and the upcoming movie, “Coraline,” which is based on his book.

Almost everyone I follow maintain active blogs and are constantly involved in, or at least dreaming up, projects. The energy they transmit through their tweets is palpable.

All this information about how people I admire work and live do two things: 1) I recognize the ways in which these people are like me and feel that I too have something to offer the world and 2) I am motivated to keep up with everyone else.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go tweet about my blog post.

Always Be Prepared

I’m just not a person who can sit down and start something. I have never been a person who can just jump into something, but I also tend to get hopelessly mired in that process of preparing. I always feel like each project must be completely organized, researched and scheduled before it can be started. In some ways this is great… it’s just that I never seem to get to a point where I feel like I’m doing it right and feel that I’m sufficiently prepared. And my projects suffer because of this.

My office area is littered with unused tools of organization: binders, binder clips, dividers, folders, book marks, sticky notes, index cards, magazine files, note books of various shapes and sizes, pens of various colors– you name it and I probably have it. My office has been described as a mini office supply store.

I have to tackle this problem because I’ve devoted myself to independent study for the next eight months and with only self imposed deadlines, well, there could be trouble. I’m very likely to continue my old habits rather than break them. And I want to break them. Now.

When I say old habits I mean OLD habits. For as long as I can remember I’ve been like this. So, how do I tackle this problem that seems to be totally ingrained in my personality? Well, I can also be pretty stubborn about things and I’m hoping that saves me.

I’m going to keep this simple: I hereby promise to spend only one hour on organization and scheduling any project before I start it. I can do additional organizing and scheduling, but not until after I’ve actually started the project.

I hereby promise to spend only two hours researching before beginning a project. I can, of course, do much, much more research after I’ve begun, but I have to actually have something started.

I suspect that this little pledge will help me get the ball rolling on a few things whether it be a blog post, a paper, or an art project. I know that organization and research are things that should be done as you go along and I do plan on doing that, but I need something that feeds my desire for preparation while limiting my obsession. Hence the pledge.

Oh, and I’ll actually end up using some of my organizational tools rather than just plotting how I’ll use them.

Happy New Year!!!

I will be keeping my resolutions to myself so that I only have myself to answer to when and if I fail.

Well, mostly to myself… One resolution I’ve made is to do a lot of reading and writing in preparation for my(I hope!) return to school in the fall. I’m going to work as though I’m taking classes and my responses to my reading will be posted here along with whatever other writing I do.

I don’t have a specific study plan; I’m mostly just going to focus on lit crit and theory that I either missed or ignored as an undergrad. I expect that other reading will sneak in as it piques my interest and when I feel like I have a subject to work with I’m going to work it into a paper.

I may end up having to set up something more structured, but for now I’m going to leave it open and see how it goes.

What do I know about race???

I know that I am white. Overly so, as has been pointed out to me.

I know that I’ve never really had to think about race unless I wanted to. I’ve never been in a situation where I have been the racial minority or in a situation that was overtly about race. Or at least that I perceived was about race.

I know I was old enough to remember when I discovered that black people did not all look alike. I really honestly was so isolated and inexperienced that this was a discovery for me.

Not long after that, on a trip to Chicago when I was seven, I saw a black girl who was about the same age as me. She flipped me off and I was horrified. Now that I look back on the situation I realize that her reaction to me was probably because I was staring at her.

The estranged father of my childhood friend is Native American. Her stepfather used to tell a joke: Why did God make seagulls? To beat the Indians to the dump. (Perhaps, I perceived this situation to be about race at the time. I hope I did. I imagine I did because I’ve remembered it so clearly.)

Two of my friends were part Chinese, but I don’t think this ever really registered for me because, for me, black was different and someone who spoke another language was different but dark hair and slightly different features weren’t enough.

I grew up looking for arrowheads with my grandma in the mountains, though it never really crossed my mind that the reason the arrowheads were there and the Indians were not had anything to do with race.

I covered my face in baby powder, painted my lips red and dressed in a robe and a cone shaped hat because we were celebrating the history of my town and my friend and I had been told that there were once Chinese gardens and, thus, Chinese residents. (What adult let us do this??? This just keeps getting more and more embarrassing.)

I was awakened to my learned prejudices when I began reading minority literatures. I suddenly became more aware of and changed how I perceived the world. The stories of minority literatures changed my story. What my sphere lacked was provided, at least in part, by literature.

Minority literatures opened up worlds of human experience to me that I could never have had any access to. Each story brought me to a different world, wholly unlike my own. More importantly, despite the differences between the worlds I read about and my own I could always relate to something. The “other” was no longer so different from me.

I have no doubt that minority literatures are important to me, to other white students, to students of other ethnicities and nationalities, to everyone, for the simple reason that we find where our lives meet with all others through the stories that are told.

And here’s where we run into our little problem.

Though I’ve enjoyed and been moved by minority literatures do I, firmly part of the majority, have a right to claim a place in them? Can I help move that “other” into being a part of an overarching human existence? Do I have any business studying or teaching minority literatures or does my race and position exclude me from understanding?  Can I help or am I, by default, the problem?

I hope not.

I don’t want to be powerless. I don’t want my best effort to be inadequate but what I can do is limited and ill-defined. I can only strive to do my best. And right now my best means thinking about this subject quite a bit more.

Sadly Neglected Blog Receives Attention/Naomi Wolf Response

Last night I finished reading Naomi Wolf’s book Misconceptions. It’s a highly feminist tome that looks at the process of pregnancy, giving birth and motherhood through the eyes of the privileged, highly educated, feminist-minded Wolf.

There are a number of points made by Wolf that I heartily agree with. I believe that the medical community unfairly disregards the value of midwifes and doulas. I believe that the American way of birth has been constrained by making medical practices such as epidurals, epesiotomies and c-sections standard practices. I do believe that it would behoove employers to offer more flexible schedules and benefits to parents, both moms and dads. I think she’s very right to try to shed light on these inequities, however, I found myself annoyed that she kept returning to the theme of losing oneself to motherhood.

She continually voiced her fear of losing herself, which I suppose is only natural for someone who seems to think she is such an island of womanly independence. Wolf expresses anger that she is forced now to rush from her office to home in order to feed the baby who is being watched over by a “caregiver”. This baffled me. I truly believe that this is a fear that is generated by a generation of privileged women who put far too much emphasis on individuality. When you become a mother you do not lose yourself… you gain another facet. It’s true that you are unable to devote as much time to the things that once defined you, in Wolf’s case writing, but those parts of you do not melt away into nothingness- they inform the way you live, the way you mother.

Another difficulty I had with the book was her view that the women she knew were in inequitable relationships with the husbands having more power. These women wanted their husbands to do more work around the house and felt overwhelmed attempting to care for one or two children all by themselves… with the help of a “caregiver”. This shocked me. I couldn’t help thinking of the multitudes of mothers who have cared for more children with less help and support from partners. I’m not saying that these peers of Wolf didn’t deserve or need more help from their partners, but I think that they were in far better positions and actually had the power to change the way things were. There are many women even today who really have no power in their relationships and the women Wolf spoke of were not them.

My Unintentional Hiatus From Writing Has Been Put On Hold (at least temporarily)

Well, what can I say?

RECENTLY READ BOOKS

The Nanny Diaries: A fun read that made me a little afraid of the rich and feel very sorry for their children. This book answers the question ‘how selfish can you get if you have almost everything?’.

American Gods: A fascinating story that places the gods of world myth in America and gives them a battle to fight. Although you might be a little surprised to find out the cause and meaning of the battle. I really like the way Neil Gaiman writes. He finds all those dark corners of his imagination that you don’t really want to see, illuminates them, and pulls you by the elbow until you’re just a little bit closer than you feel comfortable being. Brilliance.

First Indian On The Moon: Ah, Sherman Alexie. I’m about as white as a girl can get, yet this Indian’s poetry speaks to me. It makes me want to write poetry again. I haven’t done that in a long time. Maybe I’ll start right now.

For Mike On Saturday

This wonderful morning,
I heard the toaster oven ding,
and smelled the gentle scent of waffles,
wafting through the air.

They’re just frozen waffles,
that were on sale for a dollar,
but you know it’s the thought that counts,
and the raspberry sauce on top.