Medicated...and Letting Go...

Listening to strong, self-reliant women, disconnected from the emotion of the past few weeks thanks to some mind-numbing anti-depressants. Seems like just another easy way out, but if it's what medical professionals suggest, I guess I'll trust them. For now, anyway. Life has been more of a battle lately than it should and the other areas of my life need attention. Patty Griffin sings my truth:

Ain't no talkin' to this man
Ain't no pretty other side
Ain't no way to understand the stupid words of pride
It would take an acrobat, and I already tried all that so
I'm gonna let him fly
Things can move at such a pace
The second hand just waved goodbye
You know the light has left his face
But you can't recall just where or why
So there was really nothing to it
I just went and cut right through it
I said I'm gonna let him fly

There's no mercy in a live wire
No rest at all in freedom
Of the choices we are given, it's no choice at all
The proof is in the fire
You touch before it moves away
But you must always know how long to stay and when to go

And there ain't no talkin to this man
He's been tryin' to tell me so
It took a while to understand the beauty of just letting go
Cause it would take an acrobat, I already tried all that
I'm gonna let him fly
I'm gonna let him fly
I'm gonna let him fly

Taking a Day

I woke up this morning and called in sick. Should have done that long ago.

I keep trying to move beyond heartache, listening to bitter songs like Elliott Smith's "Just Somebody I Used to Know," but I can't convince myself that I don't still love or need him.

My therapist is absolutely correct when she says this feels like amputation.

She asked me if I felt any resentment and I had to say, "No, I wish I did. I only feel loss. I just miss him."

And the tears flowed.

And she was right when she said, "Your heart is still broken."

Hanging Her Dirty Linen Out to Dry

The moment he entered the Laundromat, the mood in the room altered drastically. Her face drew tight and her eyes filled with equal parts disrespect and fear. I kept expecting her to pick up the phone and call the police at any moment.

I had flown out to spend two weeks with James in Indiana, in a town called Jeffersonville on the banks of the Ohio River, across the shore from Louisville, Kentucky. James had told me he had dated people here who had ultimately told him that they could never introduce him to their parents because he was mixed (half-black, half-white). Since they were mostly high school relationships, part of me dismissed it as youthful ignorance. But I had to admit that sometimes I noticed people staring at us as if we were an anomaly that threatened them when we would walk around grocery stores or antique fairs with our arms linked or our hands entwined. When he helped me move my things across country, I had gotten pulled over for speeding in Texas and the officer asked me to go sit in his car where he drilled me about the nature of my relationship with James as his canine barked threateningly in the back before issuing me a ticket for going 15 miles over the speed limit.

We had dropped off my clothes at the Laundromat to be laundered on Easter Sunday. James had taken them in for me and paid ahead of time. As we drove away, he said he had noticed some resentment from the woman who took my clothes, as if she was upset that we had come on Easter Sunday; as if we were the reason she wasn’t able to be in church rather than at work. He said he had even apologized that she was stuck there and wished her a happy Easter. I could envision him doing it in the sweet and genuine way he had about him.

As it came time for me to pack to leave a few days later, we went to pick up my laundry. A new woman was there and when I asked her for my clothes, she went to get them and then told me how much I owed her.

“Oh, no. We already paid.”

“Well, I’m sorry, ma’am, but if you had, it would say that here on this receipt.”

“Hold on just a second.”

I walked out to the car to explain to James, trying to figure out what we should do and getting ready to pull the money out of my wallet to pay it again. But James would have none of it. Although he hadn’t said so initially, he had suspected that the resentment he had felt before had been partially racially-motivated and he was taking this as confirmation.

Her entire affect altered the moment James walked in the door behind me. When he began to confront her about this injustice, things turned ugly. As he asked the same questions I had asked before, her tone changed and she began threatening to call the police. I have never felt anything so tangibly dark before or since. She was not talking to him like a human being; she was treating him like a monster. I was baffled. Didn’t she realize to whom she was talking? No one could be more polite or less threatening. I could beat up James before he could even begin to think about harming a woman two times my size. And whatever happened to “The customer is always right?” As time went on, he unwillingly found himself giving her what she wanted, even insulting her intelligence by asking her if she could write when he asked her to write a contract agreeing to ask the woman who had served us before if she recalled us paying and promising to pay us back after making the proper inquiries. As she attacked him from her place of privilege, he did the only thing he could think of to defend himself: attacked her from his. And while that continues to haunt him to this day, I’m sure she only chuckled privately about how she was able to put him in his place.

In the short space of two weeks, I had become aware of multiple areas of privilege that I had been taking for granted. I realized that I have the privilege to go out in public holding hands with people, without worrying what they will think of me. I can ask questions of customer service representatives without them feeling threatened. I have even benefited from educational and career opportunities shut off to James in large part because of the color of his skin, making it much easier for me to swallow my pride and pay for my laundry two different times. As I asked him for permission to write about this experience, he even pointed out a detail that I had not had to concern myself with—he said that he would have grabbed my laundry and peeled out of the parking lot without paying if it had not been for the threatening-looking white man sitting in the window behind us. Because every time James has to muster the nerve to pursue justice for himself, he is forced to scope the place out to make sure it’s safe. And it wasn’t.

We hold these truths to be self-evident.
All men are created equal.
All are granted unalienable rights.
And among them?
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
But with these rights come responsibility. Those with freedom must protect their rights from those who seek to expand their own power at the expense of equality and freedom. But above all, is the importance of loyalty. Times of trouble necessitate closeness. For surely we must all hang together or we will undoubtedly hang separately.

A cute boy brings a new perspective of Murrieta...

As he noted, it still looks an awful lot like Agrestia from Weeds, but somehow he's also managed to capture some beauty. Sometimes I forget that looking at our world from a new perspective can really help us gain a greater appreciation for what we have. Call me ungrateful, but I still hate living here. Seattle, here I come.

iTunes Fortune-telling

Go to the music player of your choice and put it on shuffle. Ask the following questions and use the song titles as your answers. NO CHEATING!

How does the world see me?
Song: “Little Yellow Spider” Artist: Devendra Banhart
Comments: A song about the importance of all animals on the earth, and the limitations of only listening to one perspective. This cultural relativistic humanist (wow—a double -ist!) likes it!

Will I have a happy life?
Song: “Time and Time Again” Artist: The Counting Crows
Comments: I think the lyrics speak for themselves:

“I wanted the ocean to cover over me
I wanna sink slowly without getting wet
Maybe someday, I won’t be so lonely
And I’ll walk on water every chance I get

“Time and time again
Time and time again
Time and time again
I can’t please myself.”

What do my friends really think of me?
Song: “My Funny Valentine” Artist: Carly Simon
Comments: THIS makes me so happy; I have always said that this is one of my favorite love songs, about loving someone in all of their imperfections, even possibly BECAUSE of them sometimes. Definitely something that anyone who is willing to count me as their friend must do…

Do people secretly lust after me?
Song: “Walking After Midnight” Artist: Patsy Cline
Comments: Apparently I’M the one who does all the lusting. Figures…: “out walkin’, searchin’ for YOU.”

How can I make myself happy?
Song: “A Shift”
Artist: Richard Buckner Comments: I think that’s someone telling me I SHOULD move to Seattle. Or me just really wanting to do it and projecting that on to it…☺

What should I do with my life?
Song: “Look Up!” Artist: Mirah
Comments: None necessary; agreed.

Why should life be full of so much pain?
Song: “Please Please Please” Artist: Fiona Apple Comments: I knew my iPod was possessed…this is UNCANNY:

“Please please please
No more maladies
I'm so tired of crying
You'd think I was a siren
But me and everybody's on the sad same team
And you can hear our sad brain screaming.”

How can I maximize my pleasure during sex?
Song: “Billy Liar” Artist: The Decemberists Comments: Hahahahaha; a story about a boy masterbating while watching a neighbor undressing. What the hell?

“Will you stay here,
for a while, dear,
‘Til the radio plays something familiar?”

Will I ever have children?
Song: “Thunderbolt” Artist: Patrick Park
Comments: May God strike me dead if I do…THAT’S how I choose to interpret this fortune…

Will I die happy?
Song: “All Over Now” Artist: Aimee Mann
Comments: I think this elegant break-up song works for describing a death:

“Oh you can write the play
And every word I say
But I don’t have to stay
To see the credits

’cause it’s all over now
Yes it’s all over now
And I’m free”

What is some good advice for me?
Song: “It’ll All Work Out” Artist: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers Comments: A message to STOP STRESSING? Methinks so… “It’ll all work out eventually…”

What is happiness?
Song: “Mystery” Artist: Indigo Girls
Comments: Sounds about right…

What is my favourite fetish?
Song: “Vegan in Furs” Artist: Of Montreal
Comments: So, does that mean I love hypocrites? 

How will I be remembered?
Song: “That’s the Way” Artist: Led Zeppelin

Comments: This is how I remember my brother, who passed away a few years ago, so I have to say I wouldn’t mind if this were to be how I was remembered, too.

The Indigo Girls create a space for i-Pods in the classroom

Husband
These poems are your rival.
They undress me.
They keep me up nights.
Turn my eyes to soft fruits
ripe and realized.

Husband
These poems are my best friend.
They listen to my monotony,
my unceasing repeating.
Against their patience I can never sin.

Husband
These poems are my passionate suitor.
They go down on one knee.
They beg me, “Marry me. Marry me.”
I find
I give them my hand.

Husband
This could be exciting: poems&me, you&me,
Menage a trois. Permanently,
Happily.

Husband
Is a woman poet permitted bigamy?
Husband
Answer me!
--Angela Jackson

“I don’t care if they’re not turned on; if I even see headphones, I’m confiscating those iPods.” I have a confession: one of the hardest things that I have had to learn to do as a teacher is refuse students when they ask if they can listen to their iPods when we’re writing essays. And I wasn’t fully committed to the confiscation of iPods until my own iPod was stolen out of my classroom, motivating my desire to protect students from the heartache (and financial strain when I soon after just had to replace it with the video iPod) that my over-attachment to that wonder gadget caused. As my iTunes crank through this computer, I know that music and rhythm can inspire the movement of my fingers across the keys on my keyboard more than silence can. Nothing underscores the beneficial effects of music to literary studies more than my experiences with “Language or the Kiss” by the Indigo Girls. When I discovered the lyrical artistry of the Indigo Girls’ lyrics while majoring in English, my commitment to language was solidified, particularly when I heard “Language or the Kiss.” I was attending Brigham Young University at the time and my dating experiences with men who were intimidated or turned off whenever I talked about anything too intellectual had made me start worrying that I was going to have to make a choice like that described in this song—between my desire to attain love and my love of English literature.

I bought the Indigo Girls’ live album after spending the semester studying Tennyson’s exploration of the conflict between commitments to love and community and commitments to art and self in my Victorian Lit. class. As I listened to the Indigo Girls develop this universal theme of the unresolved internal conflict that many artists face when they have to choose between love and fame in “Language or the Kiss,” I couldn’t help thinking of Tennyson’s girl who wove a tapestry and lived happily confined in a tower atop a town called Shallott until one day, one look in her mirror at a boy named Lancelot pimping his ride through the fields below compelled her to abandon the beauty of all of those years of work…and her life. It seems that the speaker of this song feels that pursuing love is tantamount to the Lady of Shallott’s suicide boat ride, which culminated in nothing more than a glance from Lance, who took a passing glance at her corpse and merely pronounced, “She has a lovely face.” Toward the beginning of the song, the speaker of the song explains, “Oh, the fear I've known—/ that I might reap the praise of strangers and end up on my own./ All I've sown was a song…” (9-12). She seems to think that if she pursues her career as a songwriter, she will always be lonely, only winning the affection of music fans, but never having time to develop close personal relationships outside of her fame. She may feel this way for many reasons: the life of a musician who must constantly travel as he/she tours may be too hard on a relationship (see references to being “alone in a hotel room tonight” in line 25), or it may just be that she wants to dedicate all of her time and attention to writing songs and she sees the time required to nurture love as distracting her from the focus she feels that it requires. The speaker concludes the song with this final verdict: “Unforgiving, the choice still is—the language or the kiss” (30-1). By ending with the words that give the song its title, the speaker makes it clear that the conflict remains unresolved for her, which could be interpreted positively or negatively: either she will always have to sacrifice one for the other (which is why it is “a calling that [says], ‘if joy, then pain’” (21-22)), or one day she will find someone who can love her and still allow her to dedicate herself to her art, because the song ends not with death, but with the persistence of the question and her hope that “the things that mean the most” (writing and art) won’t have to “mean the things I miss” (her desire for love).

In a song about an artist whose primary materials are words, this song provides an excellent specimen for literary study through its masterful use of language. Although she has been “made mute by the virtue of [the] decision” (7) described above, references to language as a motif are frequent in this song: laughter is like a language she can no longer speak after not using it for so long (6) and as she discusses her pressing desire to understand her future fate in the second verse, she chooses to describe her interest in astrology as a form of fortunetelling by writing, “I used to like that alone out on the driveway, trying to read the Greek upon the stars, the alphabet of feeling” (19-20). She references the Greek language primarily because so many constellations, including the Zodiac calendar, have Greek names (i.e. the Pleiades, Aries, Sagittarius, etc.). However, there is a clever pun in her use of “Greek”; for one who has chosen to repress her emotions of love in favor of a more logical commitment to her profession, the “alphabet of feeling” is, like laughter, a foreign language; it truly is Greek to her! As an old maid school teacher has retreated only further into her books for solace as the years have passed in her own lonely virginhood, I can definitely relate. In the third and final verse, she gives us a snapshot of her writing this song, which she calls “my studies with this paper and this pencil” that she is using to work “through the grammar of [her] fears” (26-27). Having chosen language over love, she is forced to use language as her coping mechanism. In other words, language is the source she elects in her quest for healing.

Having elected language over love, the song also makes use of strong and effective imagery to convey the depth of the speaker’s loneliness after having chosen language over love within the narrative of this song. The song opens with a clear image: a person is standing outside a house, looking in on a gathering of five people around a table with six settings, “and there was steam on the windows from the kitchen, laughter like the language [she] once spoke with ease” (3-6). Her description of the steam on the windows highlights the cold that she must feel outside of the warmth creating it inside, and she speaks about laughter as if it is a language that she has forgotten how to speak from not using it for so long, which also conveys her sadness. Since she is looking in from outside, almost like one who feels left out, we have to infer that she is the sixth guest that is missing, but since they had set a place for her, she must have been the one who chose not to attend. In the final verse of the song, she returns to the stars, which were earlier associated with feeling and the antithesis of language, but this time she is sitting “alone in a hotel room,” and when she “[squeezes] the sky out…not a star appears” (25-6). By pointing out the detail that she is alone in a hotel room, she makes it clear that she is touring with her band, which makes sense, since the alternative to love is dedication to her songwriting and touring requires constant road travel. She is looking to the sky for inspiration again, but since it was associated earlier with emotion, feeling, and relationships, she feels that she is not able to capture the stars, literally or figuratively. Perhaps she is starting to learn that to be a true star herself, she actually needs love to inspire her art?

I can only hope that the answer to that last question is “yes,” but as I sit here, still lonely and overwhelmed by the demands of my job as an English teacher and the unread books on my teeming bookshelves, I can’t help wondering…For now, I seem to have made the same choice as the writer of the song, but I still cling to the hope that someday I will find someone who can help me fuse both desires in one.

Me? True Blue?!

I haven't considered that concept since I renounced my once overzealous ties to BYU, where I dreamed of going, dedicating far too much energy to that dream, until I was confronted with its disappointing reality. But I don't mean it in the Cougar sense this time...My mom has gotten caught up in this color psychological survey book that designates personalities as blue, white, red, or yellow and she asked me to take it. Makes sense, but of course I can't help getting annoyed at her current obsession with it, as it reminds me far too much of a certain ex's obsession with another personality test like it, the name of which I can't really even remember now. Yes, I can see how people can be classified as this or that, but I hate it when people focus on it as all-defining, justifying their behavior or letting their major life decisions hinge on something like that. Call me idealistic, but I'd like to believe that we have a little more power over our lives...

Anyway, I don't mind most of the characteristics of the blue personality type--creative, self-doubting, sensitive to others, tolerant, motivated and hard-working, etc. But I'd like to believe that I'm NOT judgmental or unforgiving, which also seem to be traits of the blue. Just a case in point for how I'm not going to let a category rule or justify that kind of behavior, though.

So, this past week has been a doozy. My principal told me she'd do anything to secure me a position at this high school, but the thought of staying here only disappointed me, which was expected but also a little frustrating, since no other viable options have presented themselves as yet. I have an interview at an all girls' private school in L.A. on Tuesday and another at another L.A. school the week after and I'm still waiting on news from U Washington and Portland State, where I'd love to go get my MAT so that I could be in line to live and teach in either Portland or Seattle rather than living the rest of my days in the hometown to which I swore I'd never return. Anyway, since she told me the "good" news, I seem to be on self-sabotage mode in the classroom, convinced to misread anything my students do as another reason not to stay, which is unfair to them and hard on me. I haven't been sleeping, either, so my emotions have been near the surface. Plus, I started a three-course term at Chapman this term rather than the usual two-course option, so I'm just weighted down with way too much.

But the rational side of me knows that my other "options" really aren't good ones, even if they are presented as full options. If I stayed here, I'd be paid much more and could live with the parents one more year to pay off all the debt I've accrued this year so I can get back on my feet and even put some money down on a piece of property of my own. Speaking of debt...my Gilbert the Golf broke down again this week and this time cost me $900 on top of the $300 two weeks ago. All of this, the three-course tuition, and a trip to San Francisco on last month's meager one-week worth's of pay (only worked one week in December-January because of winter break). That means my credit cards originally designed only to be used to purchase my computer received hard hits.

I know that this sad truth that I'll be in the same place next year is truth nonetheless, as my decision to admit to Dan Frank that I might not be able to do Boston this summer after all proved. What is that? Only the ONLY good thing to happen to me this year--I got hired to teach at an academic camp at a beautiful boarding school in a city outside of Boston this summer. It would have been free rent and a nice healthy stipend (more than I'll make staying around here), but it would mean I wouldn't be here for new teacher training or the first day of school since my school has a nasty early August start date. I'm terribly sad, though, because I think Dan would have been the world's greatest boss. During the course of my interview, he told me that he really wanted me to teach some units from my music class, after which he asked me "the most important interview question of all--what are you listening to now?" When I mentioned Ryan Adams, he actually asked me if it was true that Ryan is dating Diana Ross's step-daughter (no, not anymore--he dated Leona Naess (another current fave) a few years ago), but the fact that Ryan Adams' personal dating life came up in a job interview was the clearest sign from God to me that I HAD to take this job. Part of me still feels that it is destined, so I told him the truth about the possibility of me not being able to come, but I'm hoping that he'll wait with me for a while before he tells me he has to look for someone to replace me. I sent the e-mail last night and immediately entered full-blues-mode, but I haven't heard from him yet and I am delusionally reading that as a decision on his part to give me some time (truth? probably just not checking his work e-mail over the weekend...).

Anyway, I clearly still have no idea WHAT the hell I'll be doing next year...Ah--I never thought I'd be plagued with the indecision bug, but I'm going to blame it on George W. How does THAT work? Well, I sit around criticizing America's love affair with his "decisive" nature, so it's only right that I surrender mine so as to avoid charges of hypocrisy. Besides, my old decisive nature led me on a stubbon, unwavering path to BYU, so I'd say history has taught me the error of that attitude via BOTH sources: current events and past personal experience...

The Indigo Girls Create a Space for iPods in the Classroom

Husband
These poems are your rival.
They undress me.
They keep me up nights.
Turn my eyes to soft fruits
ripe and realized.

Husband
These poems are my best friend.
They listen to my monotony,
my unceasing repeating.
Against their patience I can never sin.

Husband
These poems are my passionate suitor.
They go down on one knee.
They beg me, “Marry me. Marry me.”
I find
I give them my hand.

Husband
This could be exciting: poems&me, you&me,
Menage a trois. Permanently,
Happily.

Husband
Is a woman poet permitted bigamy?
Husband
Answer me!
--Angela Jackson

“I don’t care if they’re not turned on; if I even see headphones, I’m confiscating those iPods.” I have a confession: one of the hardest things that I have had to learn to do as a teacher is refuse students when they ask if they can listen to their iPods when we’re writing essays. In fact, I wasn’t fully committed to the confiscation of iPods until my own iPod was stolen out of my classroom, motivating my desire to protect students from the heartache (and financial strain when I soon after just had to replace it with the video iPod) that my over-attachment to that wonder gadget caused. As my iTunes crank through this computer, I know that music and rhythm can inspire the movement of my fingers across the keys on my keyboard more than silence can. Nothing underscores the beneficial effects of music to literary studies more than my experiences with “Language or the Kiss” by the Indigo Girls. When I discovered the lyrical artistry of the Indigo Girls’ lyrics while majoring in English, my commitment to language was solidified, particularly when I heard “Language or the Kiss.” I was attending Brigham Young University at the time and my dating experiences with men who were intimidated or turned off whenever I talked about anything too intellectual had made me start worrying that I was going to have to make a choice like that described in this song—between my desire to attain love and my love of English literature.

I bought the Indigo Girls’ live album after spending the semester studying Tennyson’s exploration of the conflict between commitments to love and community and commitments to art and self in my Victorian Lit. class. As I listened to the Indigo Girls develop this universal theme of the unresolved internal conflict that many artists face when they have to choose between love and fame in “Language or the Kiss,” I couldn’t help thinking of Tennyson’s girl who wove a tapestry and lived happily confined in a tower atop a town called Shallott until one day, one look in her mirror at a boy named Lancelot pimping his ride through the fields below compelled her to abandon the beauty of all of those years of work…and her life. It seems that the speaker of this song feels that pursuing love is tantamount to the Lady of Shallott’s suicide boat ride, which culminated in nothing more than a glance from Lance, who took a passing glance at her corpse and merely pronounced, “She has a lovely face.” Toward the beginning of the song, the speaker of the song explains, “Oh, the fear I've known—/ that I might reap the praise of strangers and end up on my own./ All I've sown was a song…” (9-12). She seems to think that if she pursues her career as a songwriter, she will always be lonely, only winning the affection of music fans, but never having time to develop close personal relationships outside of her fame. She may feel this way for many reasons: the life of a musician who must constantly travel as he/she tours may be too hard on a relationship (see references to being “alone in a hotel room tonight” in line 25), or it may just be that she wants to dedicate all of her time and attention to writing songs and she sees the time required to nurture love as distracting her from the focus she feels that it requires. The speaker concludes the song with this final verdict: “Unforgiving, the choice still is—the language or the kiss” (30-1). By ending with the words that give the song its title, the speaker makes it clear that the conflict remains unresolved for her, which could be interpreted positively or negatively: either she will always have to sacrifice one for the other (which is why it is “a calling that [says], ‘if joy, then pain’” (21-22)), or one day she will find someone who can love her and still allow her to dedicate herself to her art, because the song ends not with death, but with the persistence of the question and her hope that “the things that mean the most” (writing and art) won’t have to “mean the things I miss” (her desire for love).

In a song about an artist whose primary materials are words, this song provides an excellent specimen for literary study through its masterful use of language. Although she has been “made mute by the virtue of [the] decision” (7) described above, references to language as a motif are frequent in this song: laughter is like a language she can no longer speak after not using it for so long (6) and as she discusses her pressing desire to understand her future fate in the second verse, she chooses to describe her interest in astrology as a form of fortunetelling by writing, “I used to like that alone out on the driveway, trying to read the Greek upon the stars, the alphabet of feeling” (19-20). She references the Greek language primarily because so many constellations, including the Zodiac calendar, have Greek names (i.e. the Pleiades, Aries, Sagittarius, etc.). However, there is a clever pun in her use of “Greek”; for one who has chosen to repress her emotions of love in favor of a more logical commitment to her profession, the “alphabet of feeling” is, like laughter, a foreign language; it truly is Greek to her! As an old maid school teacher has retreated only further into her books for solace as the years have passed in her own lonely virginhood, I can definitely relate. In the third and final verse, she gives us a snapshot of her writing this song, which she calls “my studies with this paper and this pencil” that she is using to work “through the grammar of [her] fears” (26-27). Having chosen language over love, she is forced to use language as her coping mechanism. In other words, language is the source she elects in her quest for healing.

Having elected language over love, the song also makes use of strong and effective imagery to convey the depth of the speaker’s loneliness after having chosen language over love within the narrative of this song. The song opens with a clear image: a person is standing outside a house, looking in on a gathering of five people around a table with six settings, “and there was steam on the windows from the kitchen, laughter like the language [she] once spoke with ease” (3-6). Her description of the steam on the windows highlights the cold that she must feel outside of the warmth creating it inside, and she speaks about laughter as if it is a language that she has forgotten how to speak from not using it for so long, which also conveys her sadness. Since she is looking in from outside, almost like one who feels left out, we have to infer that she is the sixth guest that is missing, but since they had set a place for her, she must have been the one who chose not to attend. In the final verse of the song, she returns to the stars, which were earlier associated with feeling and the antithesis of language, but this time she is sitting “alone in a hotel room,” and when she “[squeezes] the sky out…not a star appears” (25-6). By pointing out the detail that she is alone in a hotel room, she makes it clear that she is touring with her band, which makes sense, since the alternative to love is dedication to her songwriting and touring requires constant road travel. She is looking to the sky for inspiration again, but since it was associated earlier with emotion, feeling, and relationships, she feels that she is not able to capture the stars, literally or figuratively. Perhaps she is starting to learn that to be a true star herself, she actually needs love to inspire her art?

I can only hope that the answer to that last question is “yes,” but as I sit here, still lonely and overwhelmed by the demands of my job as an English teacher and the unread books on my teeming bookshelves, I can’t help wondering…For now, I seem to have made the same choice as the writer of the song, but I still cling to the hope that someday I will find someone who can help me fuse both desires in one.

A Letter to my Mother

Dear Mom,

Today I packed your dreams for me up in boxes and put them away. Almost literally. Not that this didn't start happening this past summer, when I had to move home because I didn't have a job, at the age of 26. So much for all of that money spent on all of that education...

But today, as I de-dolled and de-dished my room, I realized that in a certain sense, it was unintentionally symbolic. Trying to distract myself from the embarrassment of not acting myself with a stranger a few nights ago, I decided it was time to figure out how to get my books out of the garage, where I've been worrying about them for the past few years, and into my room. Since they have always been my outlet for lack of love and dealing with the angst of living in this town, I decided I better get back in touch with them to prevent future idiocy from occurring.

To make room for them, I first had to pack away the dolls that you had filling up a box under my bed and taking up the top shelf in my bedroom, placed there in hopes of one day needing them to give to my nonexistent future daughters. Then I turned to moving out the dishes that were still unopened--dishes you bought me for Christmas the year you and Dad thought Charles was going to propose to me. They were an early wedding gift that you wouldn't send to me when I did have a place of my own on the east coast.

I'm sorry I'm not everything you had hoped. It was disappointing to me at first, too. But you know what? I think I'm a better person than who you and I once hoped I'd be. Maybe less happy, but more whole. I hope you understand that on some level, though I know you ache for healthy grandbabies. I watch your eyes light up and hear your voice reach new tones that I had forgotten you even had everytime you get to hold a baby and I know that if any woman was designed to be a grandmother, you were.

Christmas Memories of Vermont Summers

Mom got a Sierra Club calendar from Dad for Christmas and she freaked out over the picture of Vermont. Besides my hiking trip through the Lake District in England, I have never wished that my mom had been with me on a vacation more than when I stayed with Katie and Sarah in Vermont for a few days on our way home from our month spent roughing it on an island that Katie’s friend owned in Canada. I convinced Katie and Sarah to spend a few days in Vermont recovering from our primitive living conditions in a hotel room. The first thing they wanted to do was get a pedicure, so I went for my first with rolled eyes, but then I demanded we get in the car and drive to Frost's mountain. By the time we drove out to Middlebury, or whatever that town is called, it had started raining, but I insisted we drive out anyway, convinced it would stop in time for me. Because it hadn't, they opted to stay in the car and laughed at me when they noticed I was wearing FLIP-FLOPS (I'm still not sure why...I NEVER wear flip-flops. But I think it's because we had been wearing them on the island so that we could have waterproof shoes on when we took the pulley down to the bottom of the island, because we usually splashed around in the shallow water where we landed before hopping up onto the dock to board the motorboat there). I left my whimpy, girly friends listening to music in the car and tramped through the mud, reading the little plaques that had snippets of Frost's poetry that related to plants, trees, and general views on the walk, paying no attention to the people who were running around me to get back to their cars.

After sloshing almost straight up the mountain, I finally got frustrated at the time that had elapsed since I had seen one of the plaques and the mud oozing through my newly-manicured toes, which was starting to make walking a real chore. So, I literally had to slide a few inches at a time back down, because it was so slippery and because my shoes were NOT made for hiking. I had figured that I hadn't seen anyone on the trail only because they had all run to take shelter, but when I found my way back to the car HOURS later, I looked at the map at the foot of the trail, which I had waved off in my haste to get to the source of poetic inspiration. The "trail" was the easiest circular route for the tourist only wanting a taste of Frost's wanderlust, but somehow I had wandered off the path and gotten lost. When Katie and Sarah saw me, they burst out laughing and I started crying like a baby because I had been so frightened that I was going to twist an ankle and get stuck up on this stupid mountain. When we both finally calmed down from laughing (them), crying (me), they asked me what had happened. I was so mad at them for laughing at me, but I finally couldn't resist: "You guys suck, but you know what? (Pointing my finger up at the clouds, which were of course just then finally starting to clear) I took the road less traveled by...and (clenching my fist and shaking it at their mocking faces) THAT is going to make ALL the difference!"

The Personal IS Political...

I'm new to the blogger experience, but I'm starting to feel like I've been a little self-consumed in my posts lately. It seems like I should be saying something that has relevance beyond the walls of my cramped living quarters, which I am currently sharing with, alas, my parents. The thing is, though, I can see how all of my frustrations are either caused by or are intensified by the horrible things that my president is doing to my country, in the present and the future. As I tried to explain what had me feeling so down to my friend yesterday, one of the first things that came out of my mouth was about how I don't even have money to pay for gas to get me to the classes that I am taking for Bushie baby's new No Child Left Behind certification policy. And as soon as I said it, I had to add, "But it's not that I wish those gas prices were lower. We are definitely rightfully paying for all of the shit we've been dishing out." And I know that is true, even though I never supported the man or his policies.

How is it that a 26 year-old with a Master's degree from a prestigious university has been forced to move home with her parents, because she couldn't make it on a full-time teaching salary while living in a 500 square-foot studio apartment in our nation's capitol? I can't even imagine how people are making it who haven't had the privileges that I got only by luck. How desperate do things have to get before our anger pushes us to rise up and take back our country?

My Life as a Goth...

Girl Name: Mistress Acaia

Guy Name:Sir Sebastain

* I see
sadness in your heart*

You carry too many
secrets in your heart. You should really try
and vent about things more often.


What Is Your Goth Name?
brought to you by Quizilla

Happy Birthday, Chris

Well, I think my doldrums are actually kind of finally taking a turn for the better. I had a friend stop by during my prep after he picked up on my downer tone in an e-mail and just having one person show a little concern and love really made a world of difference. He didn't have any answers or fixes, and he only had about twenty minutes to spare for a chat, but that little bit of attention really did work wonders.

I was also feeling better about my job today. I was finally able to tell my kids, after four days (well, two for each period, but they meet every other day) that the tests were finally over and they could bring food to REALLY start celebrating while we watch Troy in class as preparation for our reading of The Odyssey. I say "REALLY start celebrating" because I had cheekily termed my tests "Celebrations"..of their wisdom, of course! I've been curving them rather heavily, too, so the scores aren't as bad as they or I initially feared. We still have our work cut out for us, though. I think I set my standards a little high, so I'm anxious to give them breaks where I can now, in the interest of avoiding burn-out.

I also had my first tutoring session after school. This time I showed up ten minutes early to avoid the librarian's reprimands. I only had one taker--a student who moved here from the Philippines only two years ago. It's sooooo nice to work with kids one-on-one, where they aren't tempted to screw off with neighbors, in the desire to look cool. They get so much more out of it, as do I. I always feel so fulfilled after doing that kind of work.

My body really isn't reacting too well to all of this stress, though. I've got to figure out what I can do to curb that somehow. Between feeling ill and coming home ready to drop at 4, something is going to have to change.

Well--back to grading these tests!

I had a dream last night...

The title for this post is to be sung to the tune of the song that starts out with those words from Baz Luhrman's modern adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, because I caught that on TV just last night, before I had this dream, which goes as follows:

I dreamt I had returned to my old school (must have been thinking a lot about my regrets or something?). I saw Meg, my best friend at work back at that school, who decided to leave shortly after I did. I had quit, true to reality, and was just coming back to visit, but Meg seemed to be working there still. I walked in and she was sitting kind of crouched over at a corner desk and no one else was around. So, I asked her, "Where IS everyone?"

She turned around and said, as if not too surprised that I was visiting, but in the height of frustration, "No one EVER hangs out in this office anymore. And just LOOK at their desks!" My eyes followed her gesturing hand and took in the sight of everyone's desks, which were all cleared off. She was complaining that they were TOO organized, which made me wake up chuckling, because the piles cascading from our desks, which used to face one another, were the office joke, so when we packed up during our last few days, A LOT of jokes were made about how people would NOT miss that about us. It's funny, because our first few e-mails after we both started our new jobs focused on a) how much we missed the office banter and b) how nice it was to have more space at our new jobs to keep track of our things. I guess the dream was some kind of attempt being made by my psyche to remind me that staying in D.C. may not have been the best option either, yet I find myself feeling even more regret today that I'm not still there.

It's just that I can't help feeling as though people at the school where I'm teaching now are taking me for granted. Ironically, I am putting in so much more effort to do things right and to be a good teacher, I think because my social life is stagnating and I'm anxious to please in the interest of securing more permanent employment next year, but I'm getting paid WAY less to do it and I'm in such a big school now that my efforts are mostly going unnoticed. I showed up SIX minutes late for tutoring today and got reprimanded by the librarian, who had just turned the students waiting to see me away. I kept looking at the clock and wondering what the hell was going on, reminding her that tutoring starts at 2:45 (and wanting to point out that teachers who have just finished teaching all day without preps may occasionally need a little more time than fifteen minutes to move on to an after-school job), but in the end, I realized I was just being treated like the hired help and the first thing I had done wrong since starting work almost two months ago was being treated as this colossal error. I don't know--maybe on top of my status as a second-class employee who is only a sub is the fact that she may remember me still as a student, because she was librarian back then, too. I don't know why THAT should count against me, though; I was the nerdy student who came in to study quietly at lunch and I never lost books or turned them in late. And I won't even start on the days when, during the ONLY period that I have to prep, the office has called and expected me to fill in last-minute for people calling in sick, for no extra pay, because I'm the hired sub who gets paid a measley $110 a day without benefits. Nevermind the fact that I'm teaching a full schedule and get one prep period only once every other day, so I am fully expected to plan and grade everything as a full-time teacher would.

The same is true with my students right now, too. I spent all week busting my ass to create a delightful Jeopardy review game for my kids to get ready for their test and when I administered the tests, which I had also spent a long time tailoring to each period, complete with funny inside jokes for the questions testing vocab and parts of speech, I realized that the kids had totally tuned out the review sessions and failed to take much advantage at all of the week I gave them to study and prepare. And rather than letting it go and chalking it up to something that would maybe teach them to study better in the future, I only felt guilty as I watched them wiggle and squirm, as if I had done something wrong, not them.

How do people have love lives and families on top of this, is my question. I have enough with the guilt complexes I feel for not being superhuman as their teacher; I can't imagine adding on the guilt of not being more available to my own boyfriend/spouse or children. All I can say is ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH....

When autumn leaves start to fall...

“Autumn Leaves” sung by Eva Cassidy

The falling leaves drift by my window
The falling leaves of red and gold
I see your lips, the summer kisses
The sunburned hands I used to hold

Since you went away the days grow long
And soon I'll hear old winter's song
But I miss you most of all, my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall

Chris would have turned 29 this week on Wednesday, if he had stuck around to see it. This time of year pretty much always gets me down…more than spring, which was the time of year when he died. I hadn’t realized that it was the cause of my recent bout of the blues until I heard this song playing by Eva Cassidy this morning. The first time I ever really listened to “Autumn Leaves” was when I was in the midst of writing a chapter about Chris in this memoir that I erased after my dad found it and got upset years ago. I had downloaded a bunch of music by Cassidy, so I hadn’t really gotten a chance to listen to everything too carefully, especially since I had gotten into the habit of buying things and waiting to listen to them until they came up on iTunes on random play. Anyway, when it started playing, the mood of the song alone felt fitting, so I was even more surprised when I realized that the words themselves were oddly matching, too, although clearly Eva’s imagined subject is someone who she loved in a more romantic way.

The autumn makes me think of Chris because it was his birth month and I remember all of his Halloween birthday parties; a holiday that I perversely loved more than any other before his death, which is just another reason why I think I’ve always been a little irreverent, although I didn’t come to renounce my childhood religion until recently. In the years since he died, the decay of the autumn and the changing temperatures makes the commemoration of what should have been a longer life all the more difficult. I can literally feel my body start to react; it’s not just in my mind. This weekend I came down with the first signs of the flu and I have used it to justify my laziness and utter lack of energy right now.

We got a big lightning and thunderstorm today, to add to my mood. There’s something oddly comforting about that, though—as if nature is on the same page with me and can understand where I’m coming from. The thunder grumbles along with me, as I wonder why we ever have to wake up from the blissful forgetfulness of sleep.

I wrote to my ex today. Haven’t talked to him in five years and he’s been happily married for most of that time. I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess it’s part and parcel with the autumn-inspiring feelings of missing those I said goodbye to long ago…

Hitting too Close to Home...

So, I'm doing some mindless DOL grading downstairs this morning and I flip on the TV to find that Dead Poets' Society is playing, an all-time favorite movie, obviously. About twenty minutes later, Matt wanders down and gets engrossed, so I'm thrilled, because he's hanging out with me AND he's watching a movie I wouldn't expect to see interest him, about literature and a group of friends that is interested in doing more than off-roading and motorbiking, which just makes elitist me feel really good to think that I'm helping him to some real soul food.. At one point, I even ask him, "Who does Robin Williams remind you of in this movie?" He says, "Not YOU..." sarcastically and I say, "I know--that's not who I had in mind. I was thinking my English teacher in high school [who he also had for film]." And he says, "That's actually who I WAS going to say." So, we're totally having a little brother/sister bonding moment, right?

That's when, towards the end, my dad comes down. When the kid's father starts getting all tyrannical about his desire to act in what I'm sorry to say really IS very similar to my dad might also act in such a situation, my dad scoffs loudly and starts grumbling about how the movie has to make up this ridiculous stereotype to fit with its theme of "disrespecting authority figures." Meanwhile, his son, who usually remains holed up in his room playing video games, is in the family room watching a scene featuring Shakespeare!! So he quietly grunts about it to my mom for like FIFTEEN minutes, who was surprisingly calm and understanding about it, until he finally gets up and locks himself in his room upstairs, refusing to answer when my mom knocks. I never said anything and I was just super-glad that I wasn't even within his eye sight, let alone expected to respond to anything he was saying, but I could not BELIEVE that he could get upset about it, number one, and THEN to go on and on and on about it for so long...It hadn't even occurred to me that it would hit a sore spot; it was a favorite movie long before Chris killed himself and I hadn't even really remembered that part of the story, per se. I understand how it would be hard to watch something like that from his perspective, but it's amazing to me that he can allow it to upset him rather than trying to think about WHY it might be upsetting him, even after all of this time. It's so frustrating for me, because I still remember how the last real heart-to-heart conversation I had with Chris was only a week before he died, where he asked me to write his biography when he died and when I asked him why he was even thinking about that, he broke down crying about how he thought my mom and dad would never be satisfied with any accomplishments he ever made, simply because he had decided not to go to college. And now I'm watching Matt feel totally paralyzed by the same pressure, only directed in a new way. He WANTS to go to college, but has had a tough time getting all of the application stuff together, so, rather than helping him through the process, my parents keep trying to convince him to go work for this pseudo-CCC project that just embarrasses him and makes him feel worthless. Clearly, we are all in dire need of some therapy...And I probably don't help much even THINKING about it the way I do, but it's so hard not to be utterly baffled by the stuff I see going on around me here.

Some good things have been happening lately, though. After recovering from the blow of a $1,000 car maintenance issue, things started picking up with my job. I’m still having a little trouble with the behavior in one class, but the rest of my classes are really going well and I’m generally really satisfied with my kids and job, though the pay is really smarting, especially in light of the above financial catastrophe.

My old school is still being horrible to me, even now. I asked my old principal to write a statement simply certifying that I had taught for them for three years and to fill out an easy form for my credential program, but she didn’t respond and then when I called, she had her SECRETARY call back to let me know that she has a policy not to send evaluation forms to candidates. One of my students from D.C. called me this past weekend and asked me how things were going. I started to explain all of these things that had been happening, both with the current school where I'm teaching and the last one where I taught, and he got all teary and said so sweetly and genuinely, “I am so happy to hear that; nothing could make me happier. I was just talking to [another student from the school] the other day and I was telling him that I think both you and [said student] were both one step ahead and to the left of what our school could appreciate. I am just so happy that you are both somewhere where there are people who appreciate everything you are.” He’s going to come visit in December, so I’m really excited about that.

I went out to dinner with two old friends from high school. While we were hanging out, Sherann’s phone rang and when she hung up, she explained that another friend from high school had called and invited us to come see his band play at this divey bar in town. I had kind of had a teensy crush on him from afar in high school, but he had this really cute girlfriend all four years. Sherann told us that she had started dating him, but she decided she didn’t think it would work because he’s a little too awkward socially. She also told us that he’s really smart—has a master’s and is teaching Geography at a local community college and that he flies to places like Seattle on the weekends to take pictures of Mt. Ranier or whatever he’s going to talk about to show his students. So, of course, with the social awkwardness, the intelligence, and the regular trips to geographical phenomena in places like Seattle, I’m TOTALLY in love again.

Well, like I said…it was awkward. When we first showed up, my friend guided us over to John and reminded him of our names. When she introduced me, I said, “You probably don’t remember me; I don’t think we ever had any classes together and I didn’t exactly have the kind of personality that made it so everyone knew me.” He was sweet and said, “No, I remember you,” but when I came up to him later to strike up a conversation by asking him about his teaching, the first thing he said was, “Now I think I remember you…” making it clear that he had totally lied before. That kind of killed my confidence, so our conversation had a few awkward pauses and then he escaped as quickly as he could. It’s okay, though. He is clearly talented, but his band was a little embarrassing (Tom Waits meets Jimi Hendrix—complete with John playing his guitar with his teeth and doing these very psychedelic and thus ridiculous dances on stage without a shirt on—meets a very uncool Vincent Price). I was pretty miserable in the scene the whole night, but it was worth a shot.

Cute Student Moment

• I wore my long-sleeved striped red and black shirt under my black corduroy coat to school for spirit day (school colors) and I took off my coat during 5^th period. One of my students, Robby, says, “Ms. G., where did you get that shirt? Because it reminds me of this shirt that I saw someone wearing in a movie…” I kept bugging him to tell me which movie, despite his repeated warnings that I didn’t want to know, until he said, “Freddy Kruegger.” I cracked up and the girls in the class got outraged, “That is NOT true, Ms. G. It looks very retro and very cool. If you like Ms. G’s shirt, raise your hand.” (Butt-kissing hands united.) “If you like ROBBY’S shirt, raise your hand.” (Butt-kissing hands stayed put and butt-kissing mouths laughed out loud.)

You Can't Go Home Again

I came across this journal I wrote for an English/History/Humanities class that I had in seventh grade and it made me want to start keeping a journal again. It’s so interesting to laugh at the former version of yourself, yet also recognize your current self in little comments that you probably hadn’t even fully understood at the time. Like, I could not have imagined that writing the following would later make my pro-Euthanasia-self want to high-five my seventh grade self, who didn’t even know the term or understand the controversy of the topic: “I think if a doctor told me I was going to die, I don’t think I’d have any hope in my heart for living. I’d probably spend my days preparing to face death, not fight it.” And then there’s the early, albeit naïve, pacifistic musings that read, “One of my favorite things to do is to read. When I read, I can focus on one thing and not have my feelings all jumbled and swimming around in my head. It also gives me more things to think about. Like how much better I have it then other people have had it in the past. It also helps me to see how much America has grown and how much people have changed for better or for worse. One of the things I have learned is that when we used to have World Wars we would not try and think of solving our problems. We would just worry about winning a battle.”

I also figure that this is a good time to document my life again because I’ve finally decided to stop running away from what Irish poet Seamus Heaney masterfully designates “the givens” of my life. After running away to graduate school in Virginia after Chris’s death five years ago and staying three years to teach at a Jewish private school in the D.C. area as news of Jonny’s schizophrenic episodes floated to me across the continent, I’ve decided to move back home for a year while I get certified to teach in public schools back on the left coast. Today was my third day of teaching as a long-term English 9 sub at the place to which I swore I’d never return on my graduation day in 1997: my own high school. The ironies are abundant: I walk past my old hangout every day and chuckle to myself as I note that it is still occupied by the same old crowd of oddball outcasts; I am teaching the youngest brother of my arch nemesis and probably the only “enemy” I’ve ever felt I had, for that matter...the list goes on and on...

I’ve been feeling inordinately lonely the past few days. I tried to strike out in search of people during my 3^rd period prep the other day, but no luck—everyone is hiding in their classrooms or teaching, I guess. It’s kind of depressing. I’m sure most of my melancholy was prompted by reconnecting with Meg, who is feeling the same loneliness in her new office job at a lobbying firm back in D.C. We both miss the office banter incredibly. I keep thinking that it’s probably more healthy not to be so wrapped up in and distracted by office social interaction, but it only really is if I have a social life outside of work, which I don’t.

I am enjoying the student population, though. They aren't as enthusiastic about learning as the kids at my last school were, but they aren't completely uninterested, either; refreshingly diverse; and, most important, grateful for my expertise (which was taken for granted and even second-guessed pretty regularly at the last school where I taught). I think the area has grown a lot since I was a student at the school myself, which is part of the reason why it’s not as bad as I remember, but I also think I probably overdramatized my memory of high school. That’s what teenagers do to everything, after all.

Some Background Music

I’m about to tell you my deepest, darkest secret…but first you’ll need some context—some background music, as it were. Although I was a picture-perfect daughter in every other way growing up, I could not abide my mother’s single-minded obsession with the nauseatingly sugary sweet, thank-God-I’m-a-country-boy antics of John Denver’s music. It was literally the only thing she ever played and I found that fact to be not only annoying, but somewhat hypocritical—she who had gone to such great lengths to arrange cultural enrichment for me in the form of classical music lessons on the piano and flute. But perhaps her contradictory nature stems more than anything else from a private compulsion to atone for her own tomboyish refusal to conform to her own mother’s efforts to instill in her a sense of musical heritage when she refused to take piano lessons as a young girl. In fact, I’d say my mother’s guilty recollections of her youthful intransigence was the primary source of many of the things she inflicted on me, but I was (and the operative word here clearly is was) the girly girl my grandma always dreamed of: I was more than willing to patiently endure the long and often painful time that my mother spent intricately weaving bright ribbons through carefully-constructed hair braids and when I was in the sixth grade, my best friend even made a new year’s resolution for me not to play Barbie’s so much.

When I first began taking piano lessons in the second grade, my family was living with my grandparents in Orange County to help reduce costs while my older brother, Chris, was embarking on the first of many years of taking up residence in the pediatric oncology unit of CHOC hospital for his cancer treatment. My grandmother would sit and listen to me practice on her grand piano in her pink parlor (which was heavily bedecked with Lladro ceramic statues and histrionic Rococo paintings), gazing out the window reflectively until I finished, at which point she would sigh, “Promise me that you will one day marry a man who can really appreciate your talent.” As a girl, this sentiment of hers puzzled me in its ambiguity, but my grandma’s earlier laments were clarified further years later when, after Grandpa’s death, she explained that their courtship was characterized by frequent episodes of her begging him to go to the town dances with her, only to be rebuffed by his stubborn refusals in the form of leaving town to go fishing during those weekends. As I reflect back on those moments, I recall where my grandpa most likely was during my grandmother’s frustrated confessions of domestic neglect—running exactly parallel down the length of my grandma’s pink heaven was my grandpa’s den, which was stocked with brown leather couches and featured a TV with a screen the size of a cinema screen for watching football games and my grandpa’s favorite show, Murder, She Wrote. Taxidermied heads of five deer, a moose, a ram, and other poor creatures of the wild that had found themselves face to face with my grandpa’s rifle during hunting season peered out from the wood-panelled walls. In every sense, My grandma and grandpa truly were an odd couple.

When I was nine or ten, my family finally located an affordable home about an hour south of my brother’s hospital home in Orange County—affordable because it was located in what many not-so-endearingly term “the armpit of California,” Riverside County. I found that I could relate to my grandma’s frustrations with men who couldn’t fully appreciate her during one of my earliest recollections of an argument that I had with my father over the subject of who would last longer in the music industry—Paula Abdul or Debbie Gibson. Guess whose side I was on? Well, if I had been truthful, I wouldn’t have set one above the other. I owned only two tapes at the time: Debbie Gibson’s single, Electric Youth and Paula Abdul’s full-length album, Forever Your Girl. While transporting our belongings to our new home in the Inland Empire, we had been listening to Debbie’s single for quite some time, which meant that we were listening to “Electric Youth” and “I Get Lost in Your Eyes” over and over…and over again. Probably motivated more than anything else by a desire to enjoy the variety of ten songs rather than two, my dad suggested that Paula was more talented than Debbie, at which point my defenses went up for Debbie the Underdog. Years later, I had to concede to my dad’s argument of 1988 when, as I was watching Paula in her current role as American Idol judge, a commercial break delivered news that upheld his thesis. FOX was announcing that the Paula Abdul equivalent in its even more dreary and ultimately much less successful spin-off attempt to further degrade our country’s global image in the music industry, Teen Idol, would be…Deborah Gibson! P.S. Don’t mistake my cynicism about the American Idol phenomenon, which dominates the airwaves not one, but two nights a week. You can count on being greeted by one of two extreme emotions on my face every Thursday morning, depending on the results of the Idol vote from the night before: that of self-assured joy or of disappointed, America-hating sorrow.

My mom and my dad aren’t the only members of my family with whom I argued about music, though, and this next historical glimpse of past contention is simply tragic. They involve the disagreements that I merely invented for the sake of forging my own identity, separate from that of my older brother, Chris. I suffered from the classic little-sister syndrome of feeling overshadowed and subdued by my big brother. Since my brother was a hyperactive punk (and not “punk” in the musical sense), I felt that I could mark my own path by becoming the goody-two-shoe bookworm. Although his musical listening tastes included such classic legends as Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, Eric Clapton, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, and Nirvana, I could not disassociate them from pain, for together they constituted the soundtrack for humiliating and life-threatening journeys to and from school each day. See, my mom deeded her family-toting suburban to my brother when he got his license and he just loaded that baby down with all kinds of tools of torture, such as ridiculously large speakers with way too much bass that left my ears pounding to the beat of the last song playing for long moments after I was finally released to the silence of the great outdoors. Much worse even than that, he had hooked up a P.A. system to the car, from which he faked police sirens to spook surrounding cars, amplified a honking horn, or blasted this weird hidden track about revolutionary rabbits that featured the sound of bleating sheep from some Primus album. And Chris did not allow the earliness of our departure for Seminary at 5:30 in the morning to keep him from displaying the same level of obnoxious behavior. We moved to the small town of Murrieta before it was even officially incorporated into a city proper, so the roads leading to the high school were in such poor repair that school was frequently cancelled on rainy days due to flooding. On these days, Chris embraced the hazardous road conditions for a little donut action wherever the mud was particularly prime and my shrill screeches against the practice were frequently fodder for heightening the joy of both him and his friends, who enjoyed parroting my complaints back in a taunting manner. One day when Chris’s antics concluded with a swerve into a fence on my passenger side, in the midst of vocalizing my rage at him for placing my life in danger for the sake of some idiotic Beavis-and-Butthead-like laughs, I privately derived momentary pleasure from the thought of what would happen when it came time for him to present his case before my parents. My head held high, my head shaking in a reproachful and dignified I-told-you-so manner, I rather gleefully envisioned what was to come: finally, he would be forced to acknowledge the error of his ways and the superior foresight of my wisdom. But Chris got the last laugh again: he threatened to tell my parents about my off-limits relationship with a non-Mormon break-dancing junior boy in the school choir named Dean if I didn’t take a vow of silence, so I was forced to clench my teeth as he elaborated a ridiculous story about swerving a cow for the sympathetic ears of my gullible parents. Unfortunately, I was too preoccupied with fear for life and dignity to appreciate the genius of those artists who typically reach out and engross the full attentions of frustrated teens who are seeking any form of solace or release that rocking out affords, nor was I able to fully perceive the ground-breaking work of my generation’s artists until long after the angst-ridden period in everyone’s life that smells like teen spirit.

Instead, when it came time for me to assume the role of high school chauffeur, when my parents let me borrow my mom’s white mini-van to take my little brother Jon to seminary and high school, his desires to crank up the rap and hip-hop rhythms that moved his soul were vetoed by my rather unimpressive preferences for Paula Cole, Juliana Hatfield, R.E.M., Stone Temple Pilots, the Counting Crows, Lisa Loeb, and—my favorite—Toad the Wet Sprocket. Rather than purging my troubles through rocking full out or by laying down rhymes with the power to cut, I preferred to bathe myself with woe by belting out the universal truth that “Everybody hurts” with Michael Stipe and by admitting my self-defeating impulses with Paula Cole, who reminded me that “It’s me who is my enemy, me who beats me up, me who makes the monsters, me who stoops my confidence…it’s me who’s too weak, me who’s too shy to ask for the thing I love.” When asked on the senior survey for the high school newspaper for the song that encapsulated my high school experience, I chose Toad the Wet Sprocket’s “I Will Not Take These Things for Granted”—not because I felt grateful for my high school experience, but because I was trying to make myself better by reminding myself that if I couldn’t be grateful for much, at least I could be grateful for “flowers in the garden, laughter in the hall, children in the park…music in the bedroom, laughter in the hall, dive into the ocean, singing by the fire, running through the forest, and standing in the wind in rolling canyons,” so that I could accept that “if I’m lonely here, I’m lonely here” and that “if it’s frightening,” I’ll manage-- “I’ll bear the cold.” Had I been more self-conscious and had I been familiar with the band, I would have chosen the song that I cold-heartedly designated as my mom’s theme song when I first heard it years later—the Indigo Girls’
“The Girl with the Weight of the World in her Hands”:

“She won't recover from her losses,
She's not chosen this path, but she watches who it crosses
Maybe move to the right, maybe move to the left,
So we all can see her pain she wears, like a banner, on her chest.
And we all say it's sad, and we think it's a shame
And she's called to our attention, but we do not call her name,
The girl with the weight of the world in her hands.

”We're busy with our happiness, busy with our plans
I wonder if alone she wants it taken from her hands
But if things didn't get any harder
She might miss her sacred chance to go a consecrated martyr,
The girl with the weight of the world in her hands.

“…‘Is the glass half-full or empty?’ I ask her as I fill it
She said it doesn't really matter, pretty soon you're bound to spill it.
With the half-logic language of the sermon she delivers
And the way she smiles so knowingly at me gives me the shivers.
I pull the blanket higher when I'm finally safe at home
And she'll take a hundred with her, but she always sleeps alone,
The girl with the weight of the world in her hands.”

It was my discovery of real music during my years of graduate school at UVa that offered me my only hope of escaping my tendency to cultivate the mystique of histrionic self-martyrdom. I had an entire litany of complaints that I won’t bore you with, the most-often articulated one springing from my stubborn refusal to completely relinquish my relationship with an ex-boyfriend who had moved to Virginia after I broke up with myself for him, sensing that he didn’t have the guts to do it himself. Tired of watching me abuse myself and even more fatigued of hearing all about it, my dear friend, Matt Bentley, decided that we would have one day every week in which I would tell my ex to take a hike for the evening so that I could go over to Matt’s, where we would lay on parallel couches and enthuse together over samples of his latest finds at the local Plan 9 music store. Matt was a PhD student in the Spanish department and hosted a Latino music show on the college radio station on the weekends, so he used that as justification for spending all of his spare money on music, just as I justify my CD library with this class. One night when I arrived in tears with my latest tale of emotional abuse, Matt listened patiently and then told me he had the perfect song for me among his new finds, deeming Ryan (NOT Brian) Adams’ “Come Pick Me Up” to be the official theme song for destructive relationships:

“When they call your name
Will you walk right up?
With a smile on your face?
Or will you cower in fear
In your favorite sweater
With an old love letter?

”I wish you would
I wish you would

”Come pick me up
Take me out
[Mess] me up
Steal my records
Screw all my friends
They're all full of [it]
With a smile on your face
And then do it again

”I wish you would

“When you're walking downtown
Do you wish I was there?
Do you wish it was me?
With the windows clear and the mannequins’ eyes
Do they all look like mine?

“You know you could
I wish you would

“Come pick me up
Take me out
[Mess] me up
Steal my records
Screw all my friends behind my back
With a smile on your face
And then do it again

“I wish you would

“I wish you'd make up my bed,
So I could make up my mind.
Try it for sleeping instead;
Maybe you'll rest sometime.

“I wish I could.”

What I recognized in that song was the biggest “pick-me-up” Matt could have offered; I recognized my pathetic tendency to not only put up with, but actually ask for, the abuse that I always complained about and I found a much better substitute for a companion—good music. In those sessions, I met and grew to love Nick Drake, Elliott Smith, Tom Waits, Jeff Buckley, Wilco, Nico, Morcheeba, the Shins, the Flaming Lips, Bjork, Clem Snide, Belle & Sebastian, Dar Williams, Iron & Wine, the Be Good Tanyas, Rufus Wainwright, Grandaddy, Modest Mouse, Ugly Casanova, the Magnetic Fields, Billy Bragg, Hem, Sparklehorse, Mercury Rev, Jim White, Lucinda Williams…the list goes on and on. As my parents were packing up my things to drive them back to California after I graduated, I would say that my Matt Music Sessions were as influential as anything else in my last-minute decision to shoot off resumes to schools on the east coast and I spent numerous weekends flying down to Charlottesville on the weekends for more of them when I first started teaching here three years ago. During one particularly memorable weekend, Matt made his famous salsa and we carefully set up The Wizard of Oz to play in synch with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. We were so enthralled that we were motivated to then coordinate the four different discs of the Flaming Lips’ Zaireeka project on four different stereos throughout the house so that we could hear how they were meant to be played simultaneously for a slightly unlocked, but parallel and richly multi-layered listening experience. Needless to say, it was hard for us to go back to our classes the next Monday with a straight face, wondering what our students would think if they had known how we had spent our weekends. I find myself feeling some twinges of sad nostalgia as I force myself once again to remember that Matt has graduated and is living in a beautiful, old Victorian home with his partner so he can teach full-time in the Spanish department in Indiana’s Wabash University, but that’s why we have this class! Since the intervention of Matt, music has become a bit of an all-consuming obsession for me, but it truly is responsible for bringing us here today, so I’d say it’s worth it and I hope you feel it is, too.

So, now I imagine that you’re asking yourselves something like the following: “You’ve dragged us through this for six pages now and you’ve already actually admitted that you once adored Barbie, Paula Abdul, and Debbie Gibson; you’ve confessed that you now not only like, but love American Idol; you’ve unleashed the bloodthirsty hunter skeletons from your family closet; you’ve had the gall to confess your youthful ignorance of the important alternative revolution of your time, which you exchanged for far inferior bands; and you’ve provided us with a somewhat disturbing mental image of past boyfriends and goofball weekend extra-curricular activities…what possibly can be deeper and darker a secret than any of that?” Well, the moment has finally arrived.

My brother, Chris, the obnoxious one who figures prominently in this “musicography,” passed away during the summer after I finished up school at BYU, just as my emotionally-abusive relationship with my drummer boyfriend that Matt later helped me get over was beginning. I spent a lot of time seeking solace in memories, looking through our baby books, probably listening to Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” on repeat (remember, this was before Matt introduced me to real music). The photo albums that my mom used for all of us prompt mothers to record early impressions of their children through designating space for them to make lists under categories, like “Some Quirky Early Tendencies.” When I came to that particular page in The Book of Me, I saw something of unfathomable import, prompting a mourner’s lament almost more gut-wrenching than the one I raised when I first learned the news of my beloved, albeit “hyperactive punk” brother’s passing. I threw the book across the room in horror and buried my head in my hands. Finally, after a prolonged moment of silent contemplation, I mustered the energy to get up on my knees. I almost gathered myself together enough to stand and walk, but the news had been too much for me, so instead, I crawled over, very slowly and timidly. Taking one last big and bolstering breath, I peered cautiously over the edge of the page to read the following in my mother’s smug and self-satisfied penmanship, which recorded the following boastful proclamation of talent, among other typical toddler behaviors: “Knows all the words and sings along to John Denver in the car.”

Postscript: A John Denver Medley (Formative Influences)
All of her days have gone soft and cloudy,
All of her dreams have gone dry,
All of her nights have gone sad and shady,
She's getting ready to fly.
Life in the city can make you crazy,
For sounds of the sand and the sea,
Life in a high-rise can make you hungry,
For things that you can't even see.
In this whole world there's nobody as lonely as she,
There's nowhere to go and there's nowhere
That she'd rather be.
She's looking for lovers and children playing,
She's looking for signs of the spring,
She listens for laughter and sounds of dancing,
She listens for any old things.
Fly away, fly away, fly away…

…Some days are diamonds, some days are stones,
Sometimes the hard times won't leave me alone,
Sometimes a cold wind blows a chill in my bones,
Some days are diamonds, some days are stones…

Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy,
Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry,
Sunshine on the water looks so lovely,
Sunshine almost always makes me high.

If I had a day that I could give you,
I'd give to you the day just like today.
If I had a song that I could sing for you,
I'd sing a song to make you feel this way.

Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy,
Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry,
Sunshine on the water looks so lovely,
Sunshine almost always makes me high.

If I had a tale that I could tell you,
I'd tell a tale sure to make you smile.
If I had a wish that I could wish for you,
I'd make a wish for sunshine for all the while.

Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy,
Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry,
Sunshine on the water looks so lovely,
Sunshine almost all the time makes me high.

Music makes pictures and often tells stories
All of it magic and all of it true
And all of the pictures and all of the stories
All of the magic, the music is you

Music makes pictures and often tells stories
All of it magic and all of it true
And all of the pictures and all of the stories
And all of the magic, the music is you