to be a good woman
I am going to leave Canada tomorrow because I spent the last of my Canadian money on a warm slice of pizza. Sleeping in my car did not work out as I had hoped-- I have been horribly bloated and uncomfortable my whole trip, but that doesn't mean that I'm not having a good time.
Truth is, last night I just didn't feel like sleeping in my car after driving for fourteen hours. I was happy to see a HoJo, even though the woman at the front desk gave me the key to an already occupied room, and I ended up interupting some strangers' coitus.
Post-Montreal, the drive has been very blue-- color-wise, not my mood. I can't even describe the color of Lake Superior. It's beyond the ideal shade of blue, so blue that one can't imagine that shade of blue, or at least I couldn't before today. It almost rang with a glimmer; tintinabulation. Like every measure or so the ripples would be struck with a sparkle. Under the direct sunlight it had an aftertaste of green. There are points on Route 17 where it looks like your car is going to drive into the water, which are thrilling at 120 kmph.
(Also, I accidently followed my dad's footsteps through Montreal when I made a wrong turn and ended up at the Olympics park. I drove through John Dennique's hometown and couldn't get cell service to call and see if he was there.)
I have been in a state of contemplation, though it's hardly been melancholy. My Swann's Way audiobook crapped out 1/3 of the way through (and I was enjoying it, too!), so I started to listen to Three Lives by Gertrude Stein. Like a lot of literature from that time, it is concerned with what it means to be good. As soon as Eric Spencer's voice reminded me to regard the racial elements anthropologically (in 1909, would Gertrude Stein have been concerned with the fact that she was a white woman projecting her perspective on stereotypical black characters? Fat chance.), I was pulled into "Melanctha," the second selection. Both Melanctha and Dr. Jeff are concerned with their life philosophies and what their respective "goals" in life are. Dr. Jeff says he is concerned with living a life that he believes is good for himself "and for all the colored people," which does not include experiencing new things just for excitement's sake. Melanctha spent an earlier period of her life doing precisely that and at the point that I'm at in the story, she has come to some kind of a balance, to the wisdom that she was looking for, and is trying to reconcile it with Jeff's. It's frustrating to listen to, but has got me thinking about my own life philosophy.
On my last cross-country road trip, I came to some conclusions about my own closed-mindedness. I even wrote an essay on the topic in Princeton, Illinois:
Elsewhere in the book (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle), Kingsolver, and even her daughter, Camille, talk about the importance of not imposing their food ethics on all they encounter; not having an agenda; not looking at the way they live as a superior way, but rather as a way that is most consonant with their own personal ethics.
This makes sense to me, but I don’t do this. This has been pointed out to me on many occasions, but it didn’t set off fireworks until today while listening to the Kingsolvers rehash this point every way that they could. The first time in recent history that it was pointed out to me was in winter term’s Feminist Philosophy class. I was particularly resistant to C.S. Lewis’s ideas about “patriarchy done right” in Perelandra, and the professor’s one wish for me at the end of the term was for me to understand that I too have to be open to ideas that may not conform to the rhetoric that I subscribe to at that given moment, including Christian ideas presented in the form of science fiction. The second time was on a charter bus on the way to Chelsea Pier in New York City after whining about the possibility that there may not be a vegetarian option on the cruise ship. Andy, who I consider to be one of my closest friends, directly confronted me about my insistent need to be right and, well, the unfriendly manner in which I tried to prove my ideas superior. This occurred a little over a week ago, and I’ve been processing it since.
Jamie would say that this is because I am a thinker, or at least this is what he said when he drunk dialed me an hour ago. Jamie is not a typical drunk dialer-he is a thoughtful drunk dialer, and even if he doesn’t remember it in the morning, he is capable of conversations some people can’t handle sober. I told him about all these things I’ve written about, and how I managed to score a hotel room with plenty of room to pace. He laughed and said, “You’re a pacer,” with a tone of knowledge rather than surprise. Jamie knows my phone habits well; we got to know each other in daily midnight phone calls that lasted for hours back in the 8th grade. He posed that I’m a thinker, and he’s a feeler, and that’s why we need each other.
Andy is a feeler, too. I often drain the heart from the stories about his childhood and shape them into poems. Besides Molly and my friend Ryan, Andy is the only other person to understand me as intricately as Jamie does, and I suppose that it makes sense that we fit in a similar Myers-Briggs Personality Test sort of way. Still, it’s more than this. We all live with deliberate hypocrisies; none of us can live within a perfect, rational rhetoric, and we all just do what we can with our particular knowledge, lives, and values. This is a good reason not to try to impose one’s “superior” ethics on another person. Jamie and Andy are so close to me because not only do they accept the deliberate hypocrisies that frame my lifestyle, but they aren’t afraid to call me on the hypocrisies that I don’t see that could possibly render me closed-minded (while in the pursuit of open-mindedness).
So my summer mission became this:
So my summer personal project this year is to work on opening my mind alongside of preserving and adjusting my deliberate hypocrisies. I want to create a statement of personal ethics that can be completely altered from situation to situation. I want to be more willing to talk to people, to put myself in situations that I fear. I want to write about it. John Keats concluded that the successful poet is a vessel, one who filters life into poetry. According to Keats, poets should not hold onto permanent opinions on issues, rather they should remain open to what they observe. I am blogging again after belatedly considering Jamie’s 12th grade criticism of my need to share everything that I write. Since then, I’ve learned to write for myself as well as not filter every moment through its potential as a Live Journal entry, so I think I’m ready to go back and crystallize the moments of my life that have already happened. Rather than writing about how open-minded I am for going out and experiencing things, I will try to write about the experiences and how they affect my lifestyle. Hopefully this will translate into daily conversations, and my inner feeler will poke out a nurturing arm and I’ll truly be able to take care of my body and my mind in a way that is consistent with what I believe.
And oh, goddess, did I ever embrace this mission. To an extent that one might consider reckless. While I certainly didn't throw all of my principles out the window, I ripped myself open to the world. It was painful when dealing with things like my father's death, but so fantastic when it came to travelling and meeting new people. I feel, which allows me to feel happy.
Still, I can't help but wonder sometimes if I've gone too far. Occasionally, there's someone with a conviction I admire who seems to be calling me back, maybe not all the way, but to a sensible middle ground. Still, does poetry exist on a sensible middle ground? Will I feel so deeply there? I am addicted to feeling, to feeling like I did at the foot of the bay today, trying to describe the sound of the water. My personal ethics feel comfortable being right here for now. I may not want to live like this forever, but for as long as I thrive living like this.
The DailyOm was too appropriate for these thoughts this morning. In fact, because this entry is already obscenely long, I'm going to post the whole thing here!:
Our lives are guided by natural rhythms that are particular to each of us and cannot be altered by force of will alone. Life itself is a journey made up of processes and events that manifest before us only to be swept away when time marches on. Whether we envision ourselves creating a career, building a family, or developing the self, we instinctively know when the time has come for us to realize our dreams because all that is involved comes together harmoniously. When the time is right, the passage of destiny cannot be blocked. Yet as desperate as we are to touch these beautiful futures we have imagined, we cannot grow if we are not fully present in the evolutionary experience. The present can be challenging, uncomfortable, and tedious, but life unfolds as it will, and the universe will wait patiently as we make our way into the unknown.
The fate that awaits us is not dependent on our pace, which was preordained before we ever appeared in human guise. Therefore there is no reason to rush through life to reach those pinnacles of development associated with the paths we have chosen. Enjoying and fully experiencing the journey of life is as important as achieving goals and reaching milestones. There are lessons we can learn during those moments that seem immaterial or insignificant that we cannot learn at any other time. Appreciating these takes patience, however, because human beings tend to focus on the fulfillment of expectations rather than the simple joys of being.
Like many people, you have no doubt longed for a device that would give you the power to fast forward through certain periods of your existence. Yet haste is by its very nature vastly more stressful than serene fortitude. When you feel yourself growing impatient because the pace of your development is deceptively slow, remember that everything that will occur in your life will occur in its own time. Quelling your urge to rush will enable you to witness yourself learning, changing, and becoming stronger. There is so much to see and do in between the events and processes that we deem definitive. If you are patient enough to take pleasure in your existence's unfolding, the journey from one pinnacle to the next will seem to take no time at all.
This entry is completely different than I conceived it on my walk back to my motel room. I am currently in Thunder Bay, Ontario, in my third smoking room but the first to provide an ashtray. I don't have cellphone service, but I do have a terrible longing for my girlfriend. I'm not sure if I've said anything here; I've had so many conversations this summer about the substance that accompanies this that I'm not sure how to articulate it right at this moment. If I could, I'd say a lot about balance, time for personal peace, and remaining strong in myself rather than in fear of consequences.
I am balanced and ready to start this next year.
Truth is, last night I just didn't feel like sleeping in my car after driving for fourteen hours. I was happy to see a HoJo, even though the woman at the front desk gave me the key to an already occupied room, and I ended up interupting some strangers' coitus.
Post-Montreal, the drive has been very blue-- color-wise, not my mood. I can't even describe the color of Lake Superior. It's beyond the ideal shade of blue, so blue that one can't imagine that shade of blue, or at least I couldn't before today. It almost rang with a glimmer; tintinabulation. Like every measure or so the ripples would be struck with a sparkle. Under the direct sunlight it had an aftertaste of green. There are points on Route 17 where it looks like your car is going to drive into the water, which are thrilling at 120 kmph.
(Also, I accidently followed my dad's footsteps through Montreal when I made a wrong turn and ended up at the Olympics park. I drove through John Dennique's hometown and couldn't get cell service to call and see if he was there.)
I have been in a state of contemplation, though it's hardly been melancholy. My Swann's Way audiobook crapped out 1/3 of the way through (and I was enjoying it, too!), so I started to listen to Three Lives by Gertrude Stein. Like a lot of literature from that time, it is concerned with what it means to be good. As soon as Eric Spencer's voice reminded me to regard the racial elements anthropologically (in 1909, would Gertrude Stein have been concerned with the fact that she was a white woman projecting her perspective on stereotypical black characters? Fat chance.), I was pulled into "Melanctha," the second selection. Both Melanctha and Dr. Jeff are concerned with their life philosophies and what their respective "goals" in life are. Dr. Jeff says he is concerned with living a life that he believes is good for himself "and for all the colored people," which does not include experiencing new things just for excitement's sake. Melanctha spent an earlier period of her life doing precisely that and at the point that I'm at in the story, she has come to some kind of a balance, to the wisdom that she was looking for, and is trying to reconcile it with Jeff's. It's frustrating to listen to, but has got me thinking about my own life philosophy.
On my last cross-country road trip, I came to some conclusions about my own closed-mindedness. I even wrote an essay on the topic in Princeton, Illinois:
Elsewhere in the book (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle), Kingsolver, and even her daughter, Camille, talk about the importance of not imposing their food ethics on all they encounter; not having an agenda; not looking at the way they live as a superior way, but rather as a way that is most consonant with their own personal ethics.
This makes sense to me, but I don’t do this. This has been pointed out to me on many occasions, but it didn’t set off fireworks until today while listening to the Kingsolvers rehash this point every way that they could. The first time in recent history that it was pointed out to me was in winter term’s Feminist Philosophy class. I was particularly resistant to C.S. Lewis’s ideas about “patriarchy done right” in Perelandra, and the professor’s one wish for me at the end of the term was for me to understand that I too have to be open to ideas that may not conform to the rhetoric that I subscribe to at that given moment, including Christian ideas presented in the form of science fiction. The second time was on a charter bus on the way to Chelsea Pier in New York City after whining about the possibility that there may not be a vegetarian option on the cruise ship. Andy, who I consider to be one of my closest friends, directly confronted me about my insistent need to be right and, well, the unfriendly manner in which I tried to prove my ideas superior. This occurred a little over a week ago, and I’ve been processing it since.
Jamie would say that this is because I am a thinker, or at least this is what he said when he drunk dialed me an hour ago. Jamie is not a typical drunk dialer-he is a thoughtful drunk dialer, and even if he doesn’t remember it in the morning, he is capable of conversations some people can’t handle sober. I told him about all these things I’ve written about, and how I managed to score a hotel room with plenty of room to pace. He laughed and said, “You’re a pacer,” with a tone of knowledge rather than surprise. Jamie knows my phone habits well; we got to know each other in daily midnight phone calls that lasted for hours back in the 8th grade. He posed that I’m a thinker, and he’s a feeler, and that’s why we need each other.
Andy is a feeler, too. I often drain the heart from the stories about his childhood and shape them into poems. Besides Molly and my friend Ryan, Andy is the only other person to understand me as intricately as Jamie does, and I suppose that it makes sense that we fit in a similar Myers-Briggs Personality Test sort of way. Still, it’s more than this. We all live with deliberate hypocrisies; none of us can live within a perfect, rational rhetoric, and we all just do what we can with our particular knowledge, lives, and values. This is a good reason not to try to impose one’s “superior” ethics on another person. Jamie and Andy are so close to me because not only do they accept the deliberate hypocrisies that frame my lifestyle, but they aren’t afraid to call me on the hypocrisies that I don’t see that could possibly render me closed-minded (while in the pursuit of open-mindedness).
So my summer mission became this:
So my summer personal project this year is to work on opening my mind alongside of preserving and adjusting my deliberate hypocrisies. I want to create a statement of personal ethics that can be completely altered from situation to situation. I want to be more willing to talk to people, to put myself in situations that I fear. I want to write about it. John Keats concluded that the successful poet is a vessel, one who filters life into poetry. According to Keats, poets should not hold onto permanent opinions on issues, rather they should remain open to what they observe. I am blogging again after belatedly considering Jamie’s 12th grade criticism of my need to share everything that I write. Since then, I’ve learned to write for myself as well as not filter every moment through its potential as a Live Journal entry, so I think I’m ready to go back and crystallize the moments of my life that have already happened. Rather than writing about how open-minded I am for going out and experiencing things, I will try to write about the experiences and how they affect my lifestyle. Hopefully this will translate into daily conversations, and my inner feeler will poke out a nurturing arm and I’ll truly be able to take care of my body and my mind in a way that is consistent with what I believe.
And oh, goddess, did I ever embrace this mission. To an extent that one might consider reckless. While I certainly didn't throw all of my principles out the window, I ripped myself open to the world. It was painful when dealing with things like my father's death, but so fantastic when it came to travelling and meeting new people. I feel, which allows me to feel happy.
Still, I can't help but wonder sometimes if I've gone too far. Occasionally, there's someone with a conviction I admire who seems to be calling me back, maybe not all the way, but to a sensible middle ground. Still, does poetry exist on a sensible middle ground? Will I feel so deeply there? I am addicted to feeling, to feeling like I did at the foot of the bay today, trying to describe the sound of the water. My personal ethics feel comfortable being right here for now. I may not want to live like this forever, but for as long as I thrive living like this.
The DailyOm was too appropriate for these thoughts this morning. In fact, because this entry is already obscenely long, I'm going to post the whole thing here!:
Our lives are guided by natural rhythms that are particular to each of us and cannot be altered by force of will alone. Life itself is a journey made up of processes and events that manifest before us only to be swept away when time marches on. Whether we envision ourselves creating a career, building a family, or developing the self, we instinctively know when the time has come for us to realize our dreams because all that is involved comes together harmoniously. When the time is right, the passage of destiny cannot be blocked. Yet as desperate as we are to touch these beautiful futures we have imagined, we cannot grow if we are not fully present in the evolutionary experience. The present can be challenging, uncomfortable, and tedious, but life unfolds as it will, and the universe will wait patiently as we make our way into the unknown.
The fate that awaits us is not dependent on our pace, which was preordained before we ever appeared in human guise. Therefore there is no reason to rush through life to reach those pinnacles of development associated with the paths we have chosen. Enjoying and fully experiencing the journey of life is as important as achieving goals and reaching milestones. There are lessons we can learn during those moments that seem immaterial or insignificant that we cannot learn at any other time. Appreciating these takes patience, however, because human beings tend to focus on the fulfillment of expectations rather than the simple joys of being.
Like many people, you have no doubt longed for a device that would give you the power to fast forward through certain periods of your existence. Yet haste is by its very nature vastly more stressful than serene fortitude. When you feel yourself growing impatient because the pace of your development is deceptively slow, remember that everything that will occur in your life will occur in its own time. Quelling your urge to rush will enable you to witness yourself learning, changing, and becoming stronger. There is so much to see and do in between the events and processes that we deem definitive. If you are patient enough to take pleasure in your existence's unfolding, the journey from one pinnacle to the next will seem to take no time at all.
This entry is completely different than I conceived it on my walk back to my motel room. I am currently in Thunder Bay, Ontario, in my third smoking room but the first to provide an ashtray. I don't have cellphone service, but I do have a terrible longing for my girlfriend. I'm not sure if I've said anything here; I've had so many conversations this summer about the substance that accompanies this that I'm not sure how to articulate it right at this moment. If I could, I'd say a lot about balance, time for personal peace, and remaining strong in myself rather than in fear of consequences.
I am balanced and ready to start this next year.