Thursday, February 04, 2010
Little Earthquakes
I don't remember what my New Year's resolutions were. Probably just to keep up with stuff I've been doing -- eating healthier and working out, etc. Oh, I remember one other one. To learn to work with my hands more. I can't cook. I don't know how to sew or crochet or knit. I made magnets for really excellent Christmas presents, though. I'd just like to be craftier I guess - and have another creative outlet in my spare time.
I haven't played guitar in forever, but more than playing guitar, I miss singing. I should feel more comfortable bursting out into song like I used to when I lived alone. I don't know if Toby would mind.
Mostly, though, I am not often inspired when it comes to that. I used to sing my blues away, and then for so long I had no blues at all, or none bad enough to rain on my parade.
I got some bad news the other day. The cancer is back for my mom again. In her ovaries this time. But I guess the Stage IV colon cancer can reappear anywhere. That's the thing about this stuff that I didn't realize before.
Yesterday, my mom sounded positive on the phone. I think she regrets the state she was in when she called me the day she got the news. She exposed herself and her fears. I had mine too, but I kept them inside. I can be the strong one when I need to be now. She said it's just another step. Just another thing that she has to do before she can go forward with her life.
I thought about what my sister Beckie said the email. Something about how much more of her are they going to have to cut up?
But what do we do? My Dad said she has three options. I said, "What's the third one." He said he wouldn't go into it. I know what he meant, and I know why he didn't bother. The only real option for us right now is to fight.
Speaking of fighting, my younger sister and I are sort of in a fight. But actually, it's not really a fight. We are not speaking to each other. And contrary to what she believes, I didn't actually do anything to her. I didn't actually start any of it. She can't face that fact, though, because she needs to paint me as some horrible human being in her head who victimized her in someway. It's not that hard when you grow up harboring hatred and anger for your whole life and need someone to direct it at.
For now, I am my sister's punching bag, or at least, that's what she wants. Since I won't let her, oh man, that makes her all the angrier. Must really suck for her, I mean, I get it. I know it sure does drive her insane to not feel like she's in control of me or the situation. She can't direct my behavior using hers or her words, or any emotional clout she might have had with me at one time. My strings are no longer hers to pull, much less anyone else's.
The wedding plans have been both my stress, and a big part of my happiness for the past several months. I now have a dress, undergarments to wear under the dress, a veil, jewelry, new makeup, a skin care regimen -- all kinds of things I didn't have in October when we set the date. We have a location, and we have one-way tickets to San Francisco, since my sis and brother-in-law have been planning to send us directly from there to meet them on holiday for our honeymoon in Ireland.
"This is the happiest I've been in my whole life," I told my mom the other day, thinking about how my younger sis is fuming at that, and is miserable and isn't happy when others are happy.
But now, plans are on hold. It's not a big deal in the larger scheme of things. The bigger the scheme, the smaller everything is, but it's really not.
The plane tickets can apply to different plane tickets in the future, if need be.
The money paid to California State Parks and Recreation is supposed to be nonrefundable, but since we don't have our permit signed and in the mail yet, there might be a way for us to get that back, too, given the circumstances.
I thought about all these things when we set the wedding date. Of course I thought about mom. I thought about how we learned we can't plan anything, or my mom had. But, I learned a long time ago that we have to keep planning things. You can't just not make plans because something might happen.
I lived a lot of my life like that because I thought I had to until one day I gave up. I got into a car with at least 10 shots of whiskey in my belly. For some reason I was spared.
I know it is not the same thing; it's not the same thing at all. But I remember at that moment everything was fucked. I had No. Future. In my mind, that was it, and for months to come. My Dad is the person who made me think differently, to even try to, at first.
There's an old part of me that is still there. The self-destructive little girl inside. Ashamed of who she is, but taking pride in her own misery. She's buried, and her voice is very faint. I wouldn't even be able to find her if I wanted, but I don't.
I used to talk about wanting to find this magical place "where I could be happy regardless of my circumstances."
I think happiness is the wrong word, although mostly, I am happy. I think more important than the ideal of happiness is the ability to keep a realistic perspective on things, to be able to stay in the moment. Not get wrapped up in a painful past or an unpredictable future, not in hopes, or fears. It is OK to dream of course, but above that, it is important to live.
I don't remember what my New Year's resolutions were. Probably just to keep up with stuff I've been doing -- eating healthier and working out, etc. Oh, I remember one other one. To learn to work with my hands more. I can't cook. I don't know how to sew or crochet or knit. I made magnets for really excellent Christmas presents, though. I'd just like to be craftier I guess - and have another creative outlet in my spare time.
I haven't played guitar in forever, but more than playing guitar, I miss singing. I should feel more comfortable bursting out into song like I used to when I lived alone. I don't know if Toby would mind.
Mostly, though, I am not often inspired when it comes to that. I used to sing my blues away, and then for so long I had no blues at all, or none bad enough to rain on my parade.
I got some bad news the other day. The cancer is back for my mom again. In her ovaries this time. But I guess the Stage IV colon cancer can reappear anywhere. That's the thing about this stuff that I didn't realize before.
Yesterday, my mom sounded positive on the phone. I think she regrets the state she was in when she called me the day she got the news. She exposed herself and her fears. I had mine too, but I kept them inside. I can be the strong one when I need to be now. She said it's just another step. Just another thing that she has to do before she can go forward with her life.
I thought about what my sister Beckie said the email. Something about how much more of her are they going to have to cut up?
But what do we do? My Dad said she has three options. I said, "What's the third one." He said he wouldn't go into it. I know what he meant, and I know why he didn't bother. The only real option for us right now is to fight.
Speaking of fighting, my younger sister and I are sort of in a fight. But actually, it's not really a fight. We are not speaking to each other. And contrary to what she believes, I didn't actually do anything to her. I didn't actually start any of it. She can't face that fact, though, because she needs to paint me as some horrible human being in her head who victimized her in someway. It's not that hard when you grow up harboring hatred and anger for your whole life and need someone to direct it at.
For now, I am my sister's punching bag, or at least, that's what she wants. Since I won't let her, oh man, that makes her all the angrier. Must really suck for her, I mean, I get it. I know it sure does drive her insane to not feel like she's in control of me or the situation. She can't direct my behavior using hers or her words, or any emotional clout she might have had with me at one time. My strings are no longer hers to pull, much less anyone else's.
The wedding plans have been both my stress, and a big part of my happiness for the past several months. I now have a dress, undergarments to wear under the dress, a veil, jewelry, new makeup, a skin care regimen -- all kinds of things I didn't have in October when we set the date. We have a location, and we have one-way tickets to San Francisco, since my sis and brother-in-law have been planning to send us directly from there to meet them on holiday for our honeymoon in Ireland.
"This is the happiest I've been in my whole life," I told my mom the other day, thinking about how my younger sis is fuming at that, and is miserable and isn't happy when others are happy.
But now, plans are on hold. It's not a big deal in the larger scheme of things. The bigger the scheme, the smaller everything is, but it's really not.
The plane tickets can apply to different plane tickets in the future, if need be.
The money paid to California State Parks and Recreation is supposed to be nonrefundable, but since we don't have our permit signed and in the mail yet, there might be a way for us to get that back, too, given the circumstances.
I thought about all these things when we set the wedding date. Of course I thought about mom. I thought about how we learned we can't plan anything, or my mom had. But, I learned a long time ago that we have to keep planning things. You can't just not make plans because something might happen.
I lived a lot of my life like that because I thought I had to until one day I gave up. I got into a car with at least 10 shots of whiskey in my belly. For some reason I was spared.
I know it is not the same thing; it's not the same thing at all. But I remember at that moment everything was fucked. I had No. Future. In my mind, that was it, and for months to come. My Dad is the person who made me think differently, to even try to, at first.
There's an old part of me that is still there. The self-destructive little girl inside. Ashamed of who she is, but taking pride in her own misery. She's buried, and her voice is very faint. I wouldn't even be able to find her if I wanted, but I don't.
I used to talk about wanting to find this magical place "where I could be happy regardless of my circumstances."
I think happiness is the wrong word, although mostly, I am happy. I think more important than the ideal of happiness is the ability to keep a realistic perspective on things, to be able to stay in the moment. Not get wrapped up in a painful past or an unpredictable future, not in hopes, or fears. It is OK to dream of course, but above that, it is important to live.
Labels: Cancer, Dreams, Sisters
Monday, January 05, 2009
To Begin at the Beginning
It's 2009. The beginning of a new year, for once for me, it is also the beginning of something else.
It is the beginning of my life in many ways. A rebirth. A time to dream. A time to look toward the future with excitement. A time, the first time, my mind is truly at peace and I am bursting with happiness inside and out.
It has been a long, hard road. Sometimes I get down when I think about all the things I could have been, but that is less and less, when I think about how young I still am and how many things are possible, and that I can be who I am and end up exactly where I want to be.
The rest of my life is coming, and it begins today and yesterday. For the first time, I truly feel I could fill it with whatever I want.
Just over two years ago, I remember sitting on a cold bed in a jail cell and crying, feeling as though my life had ended.
It had in many ways, but it took the last two years to work on healing and to own my mistakes.
I didn't feel I had much to look forward to, but I tried anyway. Still, I didn't care enough about myself; I still did not know how to live life, to own my life, rather than create situations and react to things that happened to me, while many of the things that happened to me were my own doing.
My mind and my heart had been crushed by experience. Existence was something I thought I knew as some kind of tortured artist.
I had not much less than sad songs to play, and solitude much of the time. Not being able to see straight. Not being able to relate to the world like I wanted. Not being able to find my place in it.
Then a year later, my mother got sick. This changed me. I knew I had to be strong, knew I had to get myself right.
It's funny how the biggest changes occur when you are not looking.
I worked hard. I tried to make my life better, but it is such a magical thing when you wake up one day and realize you've done it. That the inherent struggle you always saw in your life isn't necessarily inherent.
I fought myself out of poverty.
I fought myself out of a semi-long, semi-serious, unfulfilled relationship.
I fought my mind. I fought years and years of guilt and abuse, self-hatred, and came to terms as best as I could with the terms of my life, good and bad, the absence of my father, years and years of pain compounded on pain compounded on pain, and buried with tears and alcohol, fear and loathing.
Here we are. I've been at my job for a year. I got a 3.89 last semester, busted my ass and still managed to fall in love. I met the love of my life while I wasn't looking. He was right under my nose for months and when I found him all I had to do was allow myself to be happy, to give and receive love, something I'd always thought I wanted, but am finally capable of doing.
I got an internship this Spring doing PR for DiverseWorks. I am graduating in May.
I got to spend New Year's in Southern California and go to Disneyland and see the Rose Bowl Parade, and see Chinatown in San Francisco and the Pacific. I saw the fog in the air and the sun on the water. I saw the lights of L.A. from the airplane's window seat at night. I saw the stars on Hollywood Blvd. and walked among the tourists. I saw Santa Monica and Anaheim and Solvang, this little Dutch town lit up for Christmas.
I saw it all with a big warm hand in mine and a goofy grin on my face, and tried to take it all in whenever I could.
It's a new year, but it's a new life.
I wanted to say some other things. I wanted to say that for anyone who is still searching, for one's self or a love or a dream or for the tide to turn or for the season to change, or for an opportunity -- something someone once told me that I held on to half-heartedly while working as hard as I could mentally and emotionally to get there --
I can't find the right words. All I guess I really mean is something cliche about keeping one's head up, or like that Cursive line, "The Worst is Over," or how Ben Folds said for those who thought the past wasn't dead to stop and smell the smoke.
It can be smoke if you let it. Things do turn around. It's not immediate, but it does happen.
My mother is still ill and has to go through three months of chemo again beginning this month. My grandfather is not out of the woods yet. There are some things in life you can't control.
Obama is going to take his role in the White House soon and the whole world, those who voted and those who didn't, will be watching to see where he takes us. I am counting the days.
I could say a lot more. Happy New Year everyone.
Happy. New. Year.
It's 2009. The beginning of a new year, for once for me, it is also the beginning of something else.
It is the beginning of my life in many ways. A rebirth. A time to dream. A time to look toward the future with excitement. A time, the first time, my mind is truly at peace and I am bursting with happiness inside and out.
It has been a long, hard road. Sometimes I get down when I think about all the things I could have been, but that is less and less, when I think about how young I still am and how many things are possible, and that I can be who I am and end up exactly where I want to be.
The rest of my life is coming, and it begins today and yesterday. For the first time, I truly feel I could fill it with whatever I want.
Just over two years ago, I remember sitting on a cold bed in a jail cell and crying, feeling as though my life had ended.
It had in many ways, but it took the last two years to work on healing and to own my mistakes.
I didn't feel I had much to look forward to, but I tried anyway. Still, I didn't care enough about myself; I still did not know how to live life, to own my life, rather than create situations and react to things that happened to me, while many of the things that happened to me were my own doing.
My mind and my heart had been crushed by experience. Existence was something I thought I knew as some kind of tortured artist.
I had not much less than sad songs to play, and solitude much of the time. Not being able to see straight. Not being able to relate to the world like I wanted. Not being able to find my place in it.
Then a year later, my mother got sick. This changed me. I knew I had to be strong, knew I had to get myself right.
It's funny how the biggest changes occur when you are not looking.
I worked hard. I tried to make my life better, but it is such a magical thing when you wake up one day and realize you've done it. That the inherent struggle you always saw in your life isn't necessarily inherent.
I fought myself out of poverty.
I fought myself out of a semi-long, semi-serious, unfulfilled relationship.
I fought my mind. I fought years and years of guilt and abuse, self-hatred, and came to terms as best as I could with the terms of my life, good and bad, the absence of my father, years and years of pain compounded on pain compounded on pain, and buried with tears and alcohol, fear and loathing.
Here we are. I've been at my job for a year. I got a 3.89 last semester, busted my ass and still managed to fall in love. I met the love of my life while I wasn't looking. He was right under my nose for months and when I found him all I had to do was allow myself to be happy, to give and receive love, something I'd always thought I wanted, but am finally capable of doing.
I got an internship this Spring doing PR for DiverseWorks. I am graduating in May.
I got to spend New Year's in Southern California and go to Disneyland and see the Rose Bowl Parade, and see Chinatown in San Francisco and the Pacific. I saw the fog in the air and the sun on the water. I saw the lights of L.A. from the airplane's window seat at night. I saw the stars on Hollywood Blvd. and walked among the tourists. I saw Santa Monica and Anaheim and Solvang, this little Dutch town lit up for Christmas.
I saw it all with a big warm hand in mine and a goofy grin on my face, and tried to take it all in whenever I could.
It's a new year, but it's a new life.
I wanted to say some other things. I wanted to say that for anyone who is still searching, for one's self or a love or a dream or for the tide to turn or for the season to change, or for an opportunity -- something someone once told me that I held on to half-heartedly while working as hard as I could mentally and emotionally to get there --
I can't find the right words. All I guess I really mean is something cliche about keeping one's head up, or like that Cursive line, "The Worst is Over," or how Ben Folds said for those who thought the past wasn't dead to stop and smell the smoke.
It can be smoke if you let it. Things do turn around. It's not immediate, but it does happen.
My mother is still ill and has to go through three months of chemo again beginning this month. My grandfather is not out of the woods yet. There are some things in life you can't control.
Obama is going to take his role in the White House soon and the whole world, those who voted and those who didn't, will be watching to see where he takes us. I am counting the days.
I could say a lot more. Happy New Year everyone.
Happy. New. Year.
Labels: Ben Folds, Cancer, Cursive, Dreams, Music, New Year's, Obama, Obstacles
Monday, December 15, 2008
The Ones I'd Like to Grow Into ...
Once upon a time, I wanted to be Nora Ephron when I grew up. I wanted to have screenwriters/producers for parents. Go to Wellesley. Be the youngest columnist for Esquire in the 1970s.
Then I wanted to be Ellen Willis. The socially conscious, against the grain, rock-the-fuck out writer and woman's leader founded the most awesome writing program I've ever read about. I would give my left arm to go there.
Then I thought, if I could somehow combine what I have learned from both women and become that, and be inspired and driven enough to do something really special like they've done, I would be exactly what and where I want to be.
They are two amazing American women, who wrote in the same time period about different things, who happened to fall on opposite sides of the spectrum when it came to their strong beliefs. Both had integrity beyond definition.
Although a slight overlap connects the two surrounding women's issues, Ephron is more composed, more proper, more elitist. She exudes a certain confidence in her writing from those times, and has an amazing presence even today, in interviews I've seen since making films like When Harry Met Sally.
Willis, also Jewish, came from an upper-middle class family, and received an ivy league education, but I doubt she enjoyed maids and nice cars and schools growing up as Ephron did. I'm sure I relate to Willis on the class level: she has this angry edge marked with an admirable sensibility which Ephron lacks. Willis got to be a leading female rock writer, examining the greatest Beatles, Stones, and Dylan albums as they hit the airwaves, even beforehand, as a member of the press. She was also an activist, observing the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, 1968.
Willis is fiercely intelligent, and articulate in spite of her neurosis. She embodies a tight blend of masculine and feminine qualities. Her words can caress or bite you, whatever she requires, yet she is more fragile than Ephron, which I understand and adore. She is the rock star of the two, regardless of her closet geekdom, while Ephron, although time and time again has written about not being beautiful, is a princess -- if not, a frightful queen. She is royalty and will always be.
I decided a few months ago I need not be either. Their influence shapes me in undefinable ways, not to mention the woman slowly swimming in me: the one I will develop into over the next 10 years, whom I envision somewhere right on the center line between these powerful, smart, insightful women.
Only last night, I decided I wanted to be Cameron Crowe. Gah!
I finally saw Almost Famous. I know, right? Please don't ask me how I had not gotten around to that yet, because I will blame you for telling me I needed to watch it but then not wanting to rent it with me. Ha! True story.
Not only do I want to be Crowe from the film; I want to be the Crowe who made all those films and wrote those amazing articles. I looked him up, and didn't realize I own more than half the movies he directed. Several are at the top of my list.
I noticed certain things stylistically I really enjoyed about Famous, but still can't necessarily pinpoint what it is about his technique that makes him an auteur. I suppose it's some thematic element although I suspect it is more. I know the auteur lies in the soul beneath the aesthetic film, beneath the narrative. It's a filmic element, although something that could be described in words, because it is as intentional as much as it is an effect.
Whatever it is, neither subtle nor obvious, it is brilliant. I'm completely floored.
Once upon a time, I wanted to be Nora Ephron when I grew up. I wanted to have screenwriters/producers for parents. Go to Wellesley. Be the youngest columnist for Esquire in the 1970s.
Then I wanted to be Ellen Willis. The socially conscious, against the grain, rock-the-fuck out writer and woman's leader founded the most awesome writing program I've ever read about. I would give my left arm to go there.
Then I thought, if I could somehow combine what I have learned from both women and become that, and be inspired and driven enough to do something really special like they've done, I would be exactly what and where I want to be.
They are two amazing American women, who wrote in the same time period about different things, who happened to fall on opposite sides of the spectrum when it came to their strong beliefs. Both had integrity beyond definition.
Although a slight overlap connects the two surrounding women's issues, Ephron is more composed, more proper, more elitist. She exudes a certain confidence in her writing from those times, and has an amazing presence even today, in interviews I've seen since making films like When Harry Met Sally.
Willis, also Jewish, came from an upper-middle class family, and received an ivy league education, but I doubt she enjoyed maids and nice cars and schools growing up as Ephron did. I'm sure I relate to Willis on the class level: she has this angry edge marked with an admirable sensibility which Ephron lacks. Willis got to be a leading female rock writer, examining the greatest Beatles, Stones, and Dylan albums as they hit the airwaves, even beforehand, as a member of the press. She was also an activist, observing the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, 1968.
Willis is fiercely intelligent, and articulate in spite of her neurosis. She embodies a tight blend of masculine and feminine qualities. Her words can caress or bite you, whatever she requires, yet she is more fragile than Ephron, which I understand and adore. She is the rock star of the two, regardless of her closet geekdom, while Ephron, although time and time again has written about not being beautiful, is a princess -- if not, a frightful queen. She is royalty and will always be.
I decided a few months ago I need not be either. Their influence shapes me in undefinable ways, not to mention the woman slowly swimming in me: the one I will develop into over the next 10 years, whom I envision somewhere right on the center line between these powerful, smart, insightful women.
Only last night, I decided I wanted to be Cameron Crowe. Gah!
I finally saw Almost Famous. I know, right? Please don't ask me how I had not gotten around to that yet, because I will blame you for telling me I needed to watch it but then not wanting to rent it with me. Ha! True story.
Not only do I want to be Crowe from the film; I want to be the Crowe who made all those films and wrote those amazing articles. I looked him up, and didn't realize I own more than half the movies he directed. Several are at the top of my list.
I noticed certain things stylistically I really enjoyed about Famous, but still can't necessarily pinpoint what it is about his technique that makes him an auteur. I suppose it's some thematic element although I suspect it is more. I know the auteur lies in the soul beneath the aesthetic film, beneath the narrative. It's a filmic element, although something that could be described in words, because it is as intentional as much as it is an effect.
Whatever it is, neither subtle nor obvious, it is brilliant. I'm completely floored.
Labels: Cameron Crowe, Cancer, Dreams, Ellen Willis, Heroes, Movies, Nora Ephron
Friday, November 14, 2008
Bah!
I used to complain I never remembered my dreams, but this week I have remembered them every morning.
The problem is they are not the sort of dreams I wanted to remember. No cool things or strange places, conversations. No, they've all been about work, or internships, or school. Really? Yes, really.
Aside from the sleep work, I've been working hard and worrying while awake. Guess that's why I'm a big stress ball, lately -- I feel like I'm getting it from both sides.
I used to complain I never remembered my dreams, but this week I have remembered them every morning.
The problem is they are not the sort of dreams I wanted to remember. No cool things or strange places, conversations. No, they've all been about work, or internships, or school. Really? Yes, really.
Aside from the sleep work, I've been working hard and worrying while awake. Guess that's why I'm a big stress ball, lately -- I feel like I'm getting it from both sides.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Baby, that was then.
Some days, most days, I have at least a moment of wow, this is where I'm at, and it's in a good way. Just different.
It'll happen when I'm sitting at my desk, realizing how much I like my job.
It'll happen talking to my mother, and hearing the energy in her voice for the first time in so many months.
It'll happen when I'm holding my beautiful niece, and she's smiling at me, or sitting up, like she does now, wide-eyed and laughing.
It'll happen when I'm sitting on my balcony, looking down across the apartments from the small view of my own place. My own place.
Some things, I don't like. Like falling out of love. Like feeling my dreams slip between my fingers before I can grasp them.
I had so many ideas about things I wanted to do for so long. They changed. Then they changed again. Now, lately, I'm thinking about staying awhile, which is for lack of a better word, just plain weird. I'm graduating in May, and months are coming and going more rapidly. I blinked my eyes and it was 2008. I blinked again. It's almost over.
But I've got a whole semester between now and then, next year. I decided to save my applications for things I would be putting out starting now, for later.
I just want to keep doing what I'm doing: living on my own. I do OK but I want to get my degree and either get promoted at my job, like there's talk about, or use my skills to do what I really love: writing. Once school is out of the way, I may not have to decide. I may get to do both.
I want to buy a car by the end of the year. I want to be able to go see my sister or my parents, or pick up to Austin for a weekend whenever I feel like. I want to be able to watch my niece, to take her places.
For the first time in a while, I don't feel like that's much to want, and it's all attainable. That's more comforting than any words.
Some days, most days, I have at least a moment of wow, this is where I'm at, and it's in a good way. Just different.
It'll happen when I'm sitting at my desk, realizing how much I like my job.
It'll happen talking to my mother, and hearing the energy in her voice for the first time in so many months.
It'll happen when I'm holding my beautiful niece, and she's smiling at me, or sitting up, like she does now, wide-eyed and laughing.
It'll happen when I'm sitting on my balcony, looking down across the apartments from the small view of my own place. My own place.
Some things, I don't like. Like falling out of love. Like feeling my dreams slip between my fingers before I can grasp them.
I had so many ideas about things I wanted to do for so long. They changed. Then they changed again. Now, lately, I'm thinking about staying awhile, which is for lack of a better word, just plain weird. I'm graduating in May, and months are coming and going more rapidly. I blinked my eyes and it was 2008. I blinked again. It's almost over.
But I've got a whole semester between now and then, next year. I decided to save my applications for things I would be putting out starting now, for later.
I just want to keep doing what I'm doing: living on my own. I do OK but I want to get my degree and either get promoted at my job, like there's talk about, or use my skills to do what I really love: writing. Once school is out of the way, I may not have to decide. I may get to do both.
I want to buy a car by the end of the year. I want to be able to go see my sister or my parents, or pick up to Austin for a weekend whenever I feel like. I want to be able to watch my niece, to take her places.
For the first time in a while, I don't feel like that's much to want, and it's all attainable. That's more comforting than any words.
Labels: Dreams, Goals, Happiness
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Information Overload.
I can't tell if my brain is rotting, frying or expanding, but I've been taking in a lot of information lately.
I used to care about issues, and I would read everything I could, and try at least to argue my point of view, when challenged.
But over the years, something changed. For a while I cared a lot, but then I learned to pay less attention. And less, until, even when slightly inspired, or feeling like I may have something to contribute, I could not even begin to try to articulate some sort of logical, informed opinion, which I also have always felt, even on the break, is often the only opinion worth having.
Lately, though, I can't help but reevaluate. On the one hand I am realizing how much I do care about, how much I've always cared about, how little things have changed for the better, and how now, perhaps more than ever, a need exists for certain issues to be discussed and addressed, and even hashed out from opposite sides.
This newfound knowledge surrounding the necessity for debate, however challenging, sometimes futile feeling, and oftentimes painful, is nonetheless acute.
We have so many options concerning how we spend our time, what we choose to care about, that sometimes realizing this in itself can have a stifling, suffocating effect.
But I dream, and I hope, that if I can acknowledge this and meet it head on, not being afraid of conflict, not being fearful of my own competence, or what impression I may make, I might be able to do something about it.
***
The fact that crime has gone down in many of our major cities over the last few years is often overshadowed by the feeling of Mean World Syndrome, that we live in a world that is completely unsafe. It is unsafe to go to school. It is unsafe to walk around town. It is unsafe to be out at night. It is unsafe for children to play in parks.
And then, inside is as unsafe as out: it is unsafe to purchase things on the Internet. It can be harmful to your computer to visit certain sites, or open the wrong email, exposing your hardware to a virus, or in the case of some young people lately, to be assaulted online and subjected to humiliation and bullying.
It is unsafe to watch too much television, loaded with violence and sex that is speculated to have such a wide overall effect on the attitudes and beliefs of spectators. Whether it is agreed or doubted that engaging in certain kinds of media too much can cause one to behave more aggressively, above all things consumption of the media is definitely known to cultivate our worldview, one that arguably can be so cynical, that rather than participate in an active social exchange we set ourselves up to ingest even more poison in our own homes.
This is what is seen as safe.
***
We have reports coming out showing that inner-city school kids have only half a chance of graduating. Some would argue it's the Education System's fault. Some would argue it's their parents' fault.
I like what Obama said. Something about how they are not "those" kids. They are "our" kids. That's pretty much how I've always felt about it.
I don't know if it's the fact that I went to 11 schools in three states when I was growing up, and got to see the system from a few different angles, or if it's because I was so disappointed over and over again by my teachers, and standardized tests, and not being challenged enough to care a lot of the time.
I don't know if it's because I read an essay on education in my Comp II class at 20 years old and went on to read several books by the same author, Jonathan Kozol, and about the issues he observed in neighborhoods and with families and with bureaucracy and healthcare and drugs, but something early on got me fired up about education, what it should be, what everyone should have access to. One of the most basic human rights, in the first place, but something everyone needs in this country to the extent that each can survive in our economic system.
There are very few marketable low-level skills anymore. Between manufacturing moving to service, countless jobs moving overseas for cheap labor and the benefit of bypassing pollution laws and labor unions, and things have moved to technology in a lot of ways too, but one skill goes out the door with the next big thing, and it is specialized as well as ever-changing.
However few jobs we have on that end, they are also overcrowded with the fact that the market is flooded with newly graduated college degree holders, who more often than not have education but no experience, student loans to repay, and a vague idea of why they went to college in the first place, placing their hands out after paying their dues for four-plus years, and wondering if it will ever pay off in the future.
***
The world is so complex, adding on to all these other issues one could barely hope to tackle in the slightest in one blog post, and also knowing they are further complicated and clouded in the fog of hidden agendas, including profit, hate, elitism, classism and hindsight as viewed through competing generations.
It seems just as many people think they know where we should go, while the rest of are saying, "Where do we go from here?" And the few who might fall in to at least ask the question or beg for an answer or even possibly propose one on their own, instead chalk it up to the idea that humanity is going to hell in a handbasket.
But what if it's not? I have to believe it's not. And just as I am voting for Obama because the chance that he is full of shit when compared to other politicians seems to me at least to be a lot slimmer, he also at least says the things that so many before him for a long time coming have never even dared to say.
And as for myself, if I care enough to try for anything, to be inspired enough to defend my own views as well as aim for some kind of positive change, that's all I can really dare to do. And if my own daring or Obama's or anyone else who ever dared to care would so in vain, it's better than never trying, never feeling, never dreaming. The alternative is not an option anymore.
I can't tell if my brain is rotting, frying or expanding, but I've been taking in a lot of information lately.
I used to care about issues, and I would read everything I could, and try at least to argue my point of view, when challenged.
But over the years, something changed. For a while I cared a lot, but then I learned to pay less attention. And less, until, even when slightly inspired, or feeling like I may have something to contribute, I could not even begin to try to articulate some sort of logical, informed opinion, which I also have always felt, even on the break, is often the only opinion worth having.
Lately, though, I can't help but reevaluate. On the one hand I am realizing how much I do care about, how much I've always cared about, how little things have changed for the better, and how now, perhaps more than ever, a need exists for certain issues to be discussed and addressed, and even hashed out from opposite sides.
This newfound knowledge surrounding the necessity for debate, however challenging, sometimes futile feeling, and oftentimes painful, is nonetheless acute.
We have so many options concerning how we spend our time, what we choose to care about, that sometimes realizing this in itself can have a stifling, suffocating effect.
But I dream, and I hope, that if I can acknowledge this and meet it head on, not being afraid of conflict, not being fearful of my own competence, or what impression I may make, I might be able to do something about it.
***
The fact that crime has gone down in many of our major cities over the last few years is often overshadowed by the feeling of Mean World Syndrome, that we live in a world that is completely unsafe. It is unsafe to go to school. It is unsafe to walk around town. It is unsafe to be out at night. It is unsafe for children to play in parks.
And then, inside is as unsafe as out: it is unsafe to purchase things on the Internet. It can be harmful to your computer to visit certain sites, or open the wrong email, exposing your hardware to a virus, or in the case of some young people lately, to be assaulted online and subjected to humiliation and bullying.
It is unsafe to watch too much television, loaded with violence and sex that is speculated to have such a wide overall effect on the attitudes and beliefs of spectators. Whether it is agreed or doubted that engaging in certain kinds of media too much can cause one to behave more aggressively, above all things consumption of the media is definitely known to cultivate our worldview, one that arguably can be so cynical, that rather than participate in an active social exchange we set ourselves up to ingest even more poison in our own homes.
This is what is seen as safe.
***
We have reports coming out showing that inner-city school kids have only half a chance of graduating. Some would argue it's the Education System's fault. Some would argue it's their parents' fault.
I like what Obama said. Something about how they are not "those" kids. They are "our" kids. That's pretty much how I've always felt about it.
I don't know if it's the fact that I went to 11 schools in three states when I was growing up, and got to see the system from a few different angles, or if it's because I was so disappointed over and over again by my teachers, and standardized tests, and not being challenged enough to care a lot of the time.
I don't know if it's because I read an essay on education in my Comp II class at 20 years old and went on to read several books by the same author, Jonathan Kozol, and about the issues he observed in neighborhoods and with families and with bureaucracy and healthcare and drugs, but something early on got me fired up about education, what it should be, what everyone should have access to. One of the most basic human rights, in the first place, but something everyone needs in this country to the extent that each can survive in our economic system.
There are very few marketable low-level skills anymore. Between manufacturing moving to service, countless jobs moving overseas for cheap labor and the benefit of bypassing pollution laws and labor unions, and things have moved to technology in a lot of ways too, but one skill goes out the door with the next big thing, and it is specialized as well as ever-changing.
However few jobs we have on that end, they are also overcrowded with the fact that the market is flooded with newly graduated college degree holders, who more often than not have education but no experience, student loans to repay, and a vague idea of why they went to college in the first place, placing their hands out after paying their dues for four-plus years, and wondering if it will ever pay off in the future.
***
The world is so complex, adding on to all these other issues one could barely hope to tackle in the slightest in one blog post, and also knowing they are further complicated and clouded in the fog of hidden agendas, including profit, hate, elitism, classism and hindsight as viewed through competing generations.
It seems just as many people think they know where we should go, while the rest of are saying, "Where do we go from here?" And the few who might fall in to at least ask the question or beg for an answer or even possibly propose one on their own, instead chalk it up to the idea that humanity is going to hell in a handbasket.
But what if it's not? I have to believe it's not. And just as I am voting for Obama because the chance that he is full of shit when compared to other politicians seems to me at least to be a lot slimmer, he also at least says the things that so many before him for a long time coming have never even dared to say.
And as for myself, if I care enough to try for anything, to be inspired enough to defend my own views as well as aim for some kind of positive change, that's all I can really dare to do. And if my own daring or Obama's or anyone else who ever dared to care would so in vain, it's better than never trying, never feeling, never dreaming. The alternative is not an option anymore.
Labels: 2008 Election, Books, Dreams, Goals, Obama, Social Problems, The Media
