I was nervous about teaching, after a year off; I felt I'd forgotten everything I ever knew. But when I walked into the classroom, not nearly prepared enough (because I really couldn't believe the moment would come), I opened my mouth and was possessed by a teacher, someone who spoke through me. I was surprised, and grateful.
So classes are going fairly well. The teacher speaks, and I do the grading. It's like being a T.A.
There is also an organized self who handles the committee work.
I, Marcelle, am completely overwhelmed. There is far too much paperwork, both student-generated and committee-generated. I have lost track of my research. I keep telling myself things will calm down, I'll get used to teaching again, there will be time, I'll figure it out. But it feels like the research-self and the real-self (I'm not sure if they're the same or not) are eclipsed by the Teacher and the Committee-Member. Those selves can operate on automatic pilot, apparently. Would that the Scholar could occasionally possess me.
14 September 2009
08 September 2009
je la découvre à mon âge
I did this a long time ago. I did not anticipate having to do it again. But once someone is really dead, there's a lot to be re-done, apparently. I'm grieving for myself, once again, for not having had what I wanted from my mother, for having had to mother her, for the final loss of even the possibility of recognition and reconciliation. How many prepositions can I get into an English sentence? I would like to write more straightforwardly, and yet there is something appropriate about the distancing effect of that string "for . . . of . . . of"; she's receding, my life taking care of her is receding, there's a sort of veil over it and over what my new life might be.
Q said to me a few months ago, when I was regretting cross words, "I think you bore up admirably under the stress of trying to sustain a relationship with someone who never really saw you." It was nice to hear. I question, though, whether I have any right to complain about not being seen when I spent so much time hiding. She pried, when I was young; I hated that. Hiding my real thoughts and interests became a habit. Later it became clear that what she wanted was not knowledge of me but information about herself: confirmation that she was a good mother, that I loved her, that I needed her, that I thought about her. It was all about her.
Example: during my first year of graduate school, she complained about the superficial, newsy letters I sent home (and how many mothers would complain of getting mail about their children's lives?): she wanted something more personal. I was both resentful and flattered; I wrote to her about my feelings about graduate school, and confusion over relationships. That wasn't what she wanted, either. She wanted personal to her: what I thought about her, about her relationship to my father, what she should do with her life.
Looking back, I notice two things: first, how early I understood that this relationship was backwards and inappropriate, and second, how long and only partially successfully I struggled against it. I was angry about the letter request and its results; I was even more angry (and much more upset by) the 10-page letters that started arriving every week as my parents' marriage deteriorated. I felt she expected me to do something; I had no idea what I could possibly do. I had my own early-adulthood, graduate-school type issues to deal with. This sort of thing was the basis for most of our interactions for years. She wanted help; I resisted; sooner or later I would cave in and try to do something for her; then she would criticize my efforts or advice. I could see the pattern perfectly clearly. But I couldn't break it. It's like what Anastasia said about her mother's escalation of drama. Finally I was the one who cut her off.
This is also what made it so hard, at the end, to deal with the same patterns all over again, but with higher stakes. It was no longer a matter (or not only a matter) of her emotional neediness, but of her physical safety. In some ways, as I've said, her illness allowed me to interact again, because I recognized that pain as real. But the request-resistance-submission-criticicism cycle kept going. Q is not the only person to observe that dealing with my mother was actively toxic to me. Was the effort to deal worth it? Am I a better person for trying to do (what I saw as) the right thing? Or did I just hurt myself, and sometimes other people around me, in trying to help someone who in a deep sense could not be helped?
I don't know if it was worth it. I do know that I was hurt. Somewhere I must have hoped for a nineteenth-century-novel deathbed scene in which she said, "Marcelle, you are a caring, responsible person. Thank you for what you've done for me, and I'm sorry for the ways I failed you." Instead, I'm left with fragments of last requests for help, poorly communicated and poorly understood, last rejections (she didn't want to speak to me, the last time I called, and yes, I can think of lots of reasons that might be that have nothing at all to do with me), last insults to my competent adult self ("school-marm"). She wanted to see me as a compliant and charming little girl; she minded becoming dependent and seeing me in a position of authority; she's the one who was sick, and her life was hard, I've got that. What I'm saying is that it was always hard, always a drama, and my response to her drama was always unsatisfactory.
To the end, it was about her. It has never been about me. I learned not to tell her about good news until I had already celebrated it, become accustomed to it and worn out the delight in it, because she would find some way to deflate my enjoyment. I watch my interactions with friends closely, fearing that I will behave like a selfish drama queen, adopting her behavior in an effort to get recognition from somewhere. I don't know what might be different in my life, now, or even what I want.
I wanted her to see me, and now I can't care whether or not I'm visible to anyone else.
Q said to me a few months ago, when I was regretting cross words, "I think you bore up admirably under the stress of trying to sustain a relationship with someone who never really saw you." It was nice to hear. I question, though, whether I have any right to complain about not being seen when I spent so much time hiding. She pried, when I was young; I hated that. Hiding my real thoughts and interests became a habit. Later it became clear that what she wanted was not knowledge of me but information about herself: confirmation that she was a good mother, that I loved her, that I needed her, that I thought about her. It was all about her.
Example: during my first year of graduate school, she complained about the superficial, newsy letters I sent home (and how many mothers would complain of getting mail about their children's lives?): she wanted something more personal. I was both resentful and flattered; I wrote to her about my feelings about graduate school, and confusion over relationships. That wasn't what she wanted, either. She wanted personal to her: what I thought about her, about her relationship to my father, what she should do with her life.
Looking back, I notice two things: first, how early I understood that this relationship was backwards and inappropriate, and second, how long and only partially successfully I struggled against it. I was angry about the letter request and its results; I was even more angry (and much more upset by) the 10-page letters that started arriving every week as my parents' marriage deteriorated. I felt she expected me to do something; I had no idea what I could possibly do. I had my own early-adulthood, graduate-school type issues to deal with. This sort of thing was the basis for most of our interactions for years. She wanted help; I resisted; sooner or later I would cave in and try to do something for her; then she would criticize my efforts or advice. I could see the pattern perfectly clearly. But I couldn't break it. It's like what Anastasia said about her mother's escalation of drama. Finally I was the one who cut her off.
This is also what made it so hard, at the end, to deal with the same patterns all over again, but with higher stakes. It was no longer a matter (or not only a matter) of her emotional neediness, but of her physical safety. In some ways, as I've said, her illness allowed me to interact again, because I recognized that pain as real. But the request-resistance-submission-criticicism cycle kept going. Q is not the only person to observe that dealing with my mother was actively toxic to me. Was the effort to deal worth it? Am I a better person for trying to do (what I saw as) the right thing? Or did I just hurt myself, and sometimes other people around me, in trying to help someone who in a deep sense could not be helped?
I don't know if it was worth it. I do know that I was hurt. Somewhere I must have hoped for a nineteenth-century-novel deathbed scene in which she said, "Marcelle, you are a caring, responsible person. Thank you for what you've done for me, and I'm sorry for the ways I failed you." Instead, I'm left with fragments of last requests for help, poorly communicated and poorly understood, last rejections (she didn't want to speak to me, the last time I called, and yes, I can think of lots of reasons that might be that have nothing at all to do with me), last insults to my competent adult self ("school-marm"). She wanted to see me as a compliant and charming little girl; she minded becoming dependent and seeing me in a position of authority; she's the one who was sick, and her life was hard, I've got that. What I'm saying is that it was always hard, always a drama, and my response to her drama was always unsatisfactory.
To the end, it was about her. It has never been about me. I learned not to tell her about good news until I had already celebrated it, become accustomed to it and worn out the delight in it, because she would find some way to deflate my enjoyment. I watch my interactions with friends closely, fearing that I will behave like a selfish drama queen, adopting her behavior in an effort to get recognition from somewhere. I don't know what might be different in my life, now, or even what I want.
I wanted her to see me, and now I can't care whether or not I'm visible to anyone else.
12 August 2009
leurs malaises et leurs manies
It seems there's a rash of crazy families breaking out in the world of the interwebs. Maybe it's just that I like to read the blogs of people who have crazy families, because they reassure me that other people go through this too. Maybe August is bringing out the crazy; the combination of heat and shortening days, with their reminders of winter even as we sweat, feels strange. I haven't been blogging because I feel lazy and stupid, yet panicked about the return to the classroom. I want to go back, I want this year to be over, but I'm sure I've forgotten everything I knew about teaching and I don't think I can perform enthusiasm. Having a structure to the days will help, having to show up and act normal will help, I know I'll remember old techniques and maybe invent some new ones, but right now I just say GAH to the whole thing.
I have been reading blogs but I think I may have to take time off because reading about the crazy families angers me and fills me with horror. I want to go slap some people around on behalf of my blog-peeps, none of whom I even know in real life, and this seems a little crazy on several levels. I wish I could help. All I can say is, I know what it's like. I've lived it. The psychosomatic acting-out, the cutting of ties with all the implications, the betrayals and the lies, the recognition that you've fallen for somebody's manipulations again (because you yourself can change, you have changed, why deny other people their own right to change?), the efforts to take the high road.
I'm still sorting through some of the after-effects of dealing with my mother when she was alive. Those voices in my head, the ones that say nasty things about me? They're hers. Somehow when I was consciously resisting the things she actually said about me, I picked up some of the things she said about other people. And I put myself down first, so that it wouldn't hurt when she did it. I didn't see, I didn't notice, because so much energy went into dealing with the out-in-the-open situation.
It's strange, because many of these wounds are so old. It's as if I was living in a war zone, for years, patched up with field techniques and carrying on. Now I've been evacuated, and it's possible to have some shrapnel dug out, to have some reconstruction done and do some cosmetic work on the visible scars, and above all, get physical therapy so things work properly again, rather than just holding together. Saying that seems like a terrible exaggeration and disrespectful of people who do live in war zones, and people who've had greater psychic trauma than I have. But maybe some of you know what I mean.
I have been reading blogs but I think I may have to take time off because reading about the crazy families angers me and fills me with horror. I want to go slap some people around on behalf of my blog-peeps, none of whom I even know in real life, and this seems a little crazy on several levels. I wish I could help. All I can say is, I know what it's like. I've lived it. The psychosomatic acting-out, the cutting of ties with all the implications, the betrayals and the lies, the recognition that you've fallen for somebody's manipulations again (because you yourself can change, you have changed, why deny other people their own right to change?), the efforts to take the high road.
I'm still sorting through some of the after-effects of dealing with my mother when she was alive. Those voices in my head, the ones that say nasty things about me? They're hers. Somehow when I was consciously resisting the things she actually said about me, I picked up some of the things she said about other people. And I put myself down first, so that it wouldn't hurt when she did it. I didn't see, I didn't notice, because so much energy went into dealing with the out-in-the-open situation.
It's strange, because many of these wounds are so old. It's as if I was living in a war zone, for years, patched up with field techniques and carrying on. Now I've been evacuated, and it's possible to have some shrapnel dug out, to have some reconstruction done and do some cosmetic work on the visible scars, and above all, get physical therapy so things work properly again, rather than just holding together. Saying that seems like a terrible exaggeration and disrespectful of people who do live in war zones, and people who've had greater psychic trauma than I have. But maybe some of you know what I mean.
29 July 2009
une maladie intermittante
It seems I'm having a fibromyalgic flare-up. An old injury is aching. When this goes on long enough, other things start to hurt too, whether in sympathy, or because I get sensitized to pain, or because pain keeps me from sleeping well and then fatigue causes problems.
I'm out of the habit of dealing with this. I have to review my old techniques of alternating work and rest, gauging my energy levels, choosing activities carefully (do one less thing in a day than I think I can), being fanatical about yoga and exercise every day, planning meals so I get an optimal amount of protein and don't let myself get too hungry. For a long time, I've been well enough to get a bit sloppy about all these things. More than a bit, about some of them.
And, as usual, I second-guess myself. Is what I'm feeling actually depression, because I have to go back to work? I don't think so. In many ways, I'm looking forward to the start of classes. It's a symbolic new beginning, a signal that this Annus Horribilis is over and better (or at least different) things are in the offing.
Depression, of course, is also an illness, and in any case I think the situation is as I described it in my first paragraph: pain begets fatigue begets more pain. I have, at this point, a decade of experience with fibromyalgia, and a fat file of medical tests and appointments to prove that that's what I have and not any of the things that have been ruled out. I've been very fortunate to have had the long remission I've had, and I have hope that if I manage my problems correctly now, I'll get back into it.
My point is rather that it's so hard for me to accept illness of any kind. It's not even that I push myself beyond where I should; what I hate, and can't stop, is the self-nagging. You're not really sick. You're malingering. Take your mind off it. Quit whining. Pull yourself together. You're weak, you're feeble, you're useless. If you were a better human being, you'd work through it. It's all in your head. If you think you can, you can; if you think you can't, you'll never amount to anything, you worthless piece of . . . . I want to sit down and yell, "Shut up! Leave me alone! Don't talk to me like that or I won't do anything at all!"
Such horrible self-nagging is an energy drain in itself. Why do I do it? Why is it so hard to be gentle with myself? The principle of ahimsa applies to self as well as to other beings. If I take it as a spiritual commandment, can I stop beating myself up for being souffrante?
I'm out of the habit of dealing with this. I have to review my old techniques of alternating work and rest, gauging my energy levels, choosing activities carefully (do one less thing in a day than I think I can), being fanatical about yoga and exercise every day, planning meals so I get an optimal amount of protein and don't let myself get too hungry. For a long time, I've been well enough to get a bit sloppy about all these things. More than a bit, about some of them.
And, as usual, I second-guess myself. Is what I'm feeling actually depression, because I have to go back to work? I don't think so. In many ways, I'm looking forward to the start of classes. It's a symbolic new beginning, a signal that this Annus Horribilis is over and better (or at least different) things are in the offing.
Depression, of course, is also an illness, and in any case I think the situation is as I described it in my first paragraph: pain begets fatigue begets more pain. I have, at this point, a decade of experience with fibromyalgia, and a fat file of medical tests and appointments to prove that that's what I have and not any of the things that have been ruled out. I've been very fortunate to have had the long remission I've had, and I have hope that if I manage my problems correctly now, I'll get back into it.
My point is rather that it's so hard for me to accept illness of any kind. It's not even that I push myself beyond where I should; what I hate, and can't stop, is the self-nagging. You're not really sick. You're malingering. Take your mind off it. Quit whining. Pull yourself together. You're weak, you're feeble, you're useless. If you were a better human being, you'd work through it. It's all in your head. If you think you can, you can; if you think you can't, you'll never amount to anything, you worthless piece of . . . . I want to sit down and yell, "Shut up! Leave me alone! Don't talk to me like that or I won't do anything at all!"
Such horrible self-nagging is an energy drain in itself. Why do I do it? Why is it so hard to be gentle with myself? The principle of ahimsa applies to self as well as to other beings. If I take it as a spiritual commandment, can I stop beating myself up for being souffrante?
22 July 2009
à force de se désintéresser des personnes
Ianqui and Anastasia are both having boundary problems with their mothers.
I don't want to hog other people's comments, and anyway I think my experiences may form an inappropriate comparison. I don't think their mothers have diagnosable personality problems. But I sympathize with them both, and they both seem to be trying to understand their mothers' positions while preserving their own privacy, sanity, and sense of self.
And to the anonymous who said time is limited, I say yes, thank whatever gods may be, it is. There comes a point when you no longer have to walk the line between trying to respect your mother's feelings and trying to respect your own. There comes a time when the people you try to please are the ones you have chosen to have in your life. There comes a day when you can get on with your own life without your mother making up stories about how you feel about her and what you do to her.
Recently someone said to me that after her mother's death, she felt she was finally free to understand her mother as a person, not just in relation to her. She meant to suggest that might happen to me, as well.
My mother's problems were such that I had to detach from her, in certain ways, decades before her death. I've seen her as a person, and felt compassion for her, for a long time. I saw her perspective just fine, which was why the last few years were so damned hard. If I were still the younger rebellious Marcelle, I would have stayed gone. It's only the detachment and the transmutation of rebellion into compassion that allowed me to show up, do the nursing, take the phone calls, make the phone calls, and so on. I didn't do it well, because I'm not suited to being a nurse and because my mother was passive-aggressive, histrionic, probably bi-polar, and just plain infuriating. But I did do it to the best of my ability, and in the good moments I appreciated her courage and wit.
It's seven months since she died, and that may seem like early days yet. Perhaps there will come a day when I have regrets, and say "if only I had spent more time with her while I could." But I don't think so. I spent the time I could stand. Even had I lived with her, it wouldn't have been enough for her. The only way to give her anything was to be clear about what I needed first, and deal with her after I'd taken care of myself.
It's really not socially acceptable to say these things. People seem to think I should still be grieving; they want to sympathize and tell me about missing their own dead. I can see that I'm still in some sort of getting-used-to-it process. Though I'm sometimes sad for her, for a life warped by her emotional difficulties, most of what I feel is not grief as I recognize it. It ranges from relief to mild euphoria. My mother's life is over, and I am free.
I don't want to hog other people's comments, and anyway I think my experiences may form an inappropriate comparison. I don't think their mothers have diagnosable personality problems. But I sympathize with them both, and they both seem to be trying to understand their mothers' positions while preserving their own privacy, sanity, and sense of self.
And to the anonymous who said time is limited, I say yes, thank whatever gods may be, it is. There comes a point when you no longer have to walk the line between trying to respect your mother's feelings and trying to respect your own. There comes a time when the people you try to please are the ones you have chosen to have in your life. There comes a day when you can get on with your own life without your mother making up stories about how you feel about her and what you do to her.
Recently someone said to me that after her mother's death, she felt she was finally free to understand her mother as a person, not just in relation to her. She meant to suggest that might happen to me, as well.
My mother's problems were such that I had to detach from her, in certain ways, decades before her death. I've seen her as a person, and felt compassion for her, for a long time. I saw her perspective just fine, which was why the last few years were so damned hard. If I were still the younger rebellious Marcelle, I would have stayed gone. It's only the detachment and the transmutation of rebellion into compassion that allowed me to show up, do the nursing, take the phone calls, make the phone calls, and so on. I didn't do it well, because I'm not suited to being a nurse and because my mother was passive-aggressive, histrionic, probably bi-polar, and just plain infuriating. But I did do it to the best of my ability, and in the good moments I appreciated her courage and wit.
It's seven months since she died, and that may seem like early days yet. Perhaps there will come a day when I have regrets, and say "if only I had spent more time with her while I could." But I don't think so. I spent the time I could stand. Even had I lived with her, it wouldn't have been enough for her. The only way to give her anything was to be clear about what I needed first, and deal with her after I'd taken care of myself.
It's really not socially acceptable to say these things. People seem to think I should still be grieving; they want to sympathize and tell me about missing their own dead. I can see that I'm still in some sort of getting-used-to-it process. Though I'm sometimes sad for her, for a life warped by her emotional difficulties, most of what I feel is not grief as I recognize it. It ranges from relief to mild euphoria. My mother's life is over, and I am free.
16 July 2009
je ne peux dire quel malaise
Mid-July. I am filled with dismay; for comfort, I turn to Ms. Mentor:
The sabbatical syndrome always cures itself: sabbaticals end. For many academics, the return to teaching at first seems draining, with endless demands on one's time. Students and committees claw and howl for attention again, and there's scarcely time for laundry, haircuts, or grocery shopping, never mind whining. . . . Yet the return to teaching is also a return to the well-honed skills of skimming, skipping, and quick note-taking—a return to Adequacy rather than Perfection.
. . . .
And so Ms Mentor says: Not to Despair. The post-sabbatical year is often the most productive in an academic's life, for the results of rest, refreshment, reflection and relaxation only gradually become apparent.
Oh please, let it be true!
The sabbatical syndrome always cures itself: sabbaticals end. For many academics, the return to teaching at first seems draining, with endless demands on one's time. Students and committees claw and howl for attention again, and there's scarcely time for laundry, haircuts, or grocery shopping, never mind whining. . . . Yet the return to teaching is also a return to the well-honed skills of skimming, skipping, and quick note-taking—a return to Adequacy rather than Perfection.
. . . .
And so Ms Mentor says: Not to Despair. The post-sabbatical year is often the most productive in an academic's life, for the results of rest, refreshment, reflection and relaxation only gradually become apparent.
Oh please, let it be true!
26 June 2009
dans notre amitié
Shireen is visiting. In some ways, it's great. No one else in the world has known me for so long. I say that because I don't think my family actually knows me, and because we have spent even less time together since I left home than Shireen and I have. Being with her reminds me of when we were all kids together, her sibs and mine and other families on our block, and I wish we lived nearer each other and could be together more. We get each other; we have a common store of memories; we're nearly family.
In other ways, it's awful. No one else in the world has know me for so long, and being with her reminds me of when I was much younger and a different person. It's like family: no matter how hard you try to be your adult self with them, their patterns have not altered, and they suck you back into acting the way you used to.
Seeing Shireen reminds me that when I lived in Eden, I was neither nice nor happy. She reminds me of my mother: likes attention, likes drama, likes her own way, does not listen well. Do I attract such people? No, I don't think so: the friends of my adulthood are not like that, at all. But I value old ties, and so I wind up with such people still attached to me, one way and another. I suppose that means I have to accept the baggage as the price of keeping the old friends.
I'm not sure it's worth it.
Around Shireen, I quickly get cranky. And bossy. And stubborn. I've got better at noticing what the triggers are; I no longer think everything is my fault, or just my nature. It's true that I, too, like things my own way: I have my routines, and I like them to remain uninterrupted. If you don't know my routines, I make allowances. But if I have told you (for example), that I can only have a small amount of caffeine first thing in the morning, and that "first thing" for me is before 7:00, then don't come down when I'm making my decaffeinated cup later and insist on making a pot of tea for us to share (taking all the hot water in the kettle) that has regular black tea in it. You're going to have to drink it all yourself, and I'm going to have to boil more water for the single cup I wanted (and offered) in the first place.
It sounds so petty. But really, it makes me absolutely mental to tell someone what I want or need, and have my words completely ignored. And so I wind up digging in my heels firmly on things that don't really matter, or don't seem to, because pushing back, hard, is the way to manage Shireen. I am so tired of dealing with people who push on boundaries and have to be pushed back.
I would like to have more friends. Things like this visit make me fear that I am not actually a good friend, that perhaps I too demonstrate the behaviors that annoy me in Shireen, that I am over-sensitive and still not a very nice person. I have to remind myself that I have made friends as an adult, and that those friends do not make me irritable and defensive.
In other ways, it's awful. No one else in the world has know me for so long, and being with her reminds me of when I was much younger and a different person. It's like family: no matter how hard you try to be your adult self with them, their patterns have not altered, and they suck you back into acting the way you used to.
Seeing Shireen reminds me that when I lived in Eden, I was neither nice nor happy. She reminds me of my mother: likes attention, likes drama, likes her own way, does not listen well. Do I attract such people? No, I don't think so: the friends of my adulthood are not like that, at all. But I value old ties, and so I wind up with such people still attached to me, one way and another. I suppose that means I have to accept the baggage as the price of keeping the old friends.
I'm not sure it's worth it.
Around Shireen, I quickly get cranky. And bossy. And stubborn. I've got better at noticing what the triggers are; I no longer think everything is my fault, or just my nature. It's true that I, too, like things my own way: I have my routines, and I like them to remain uninterrupted. If you don't know my routines, I make allowances. But if I have told you (for example), that I can only have a small amount of caffeine first thing in the morning, and that "first thing" for me is before 7:00, then don't come down when I'm making my decaffeinated cup later and insist on making a pot of tea for us to share (taking all the hot water in the kettle) that has regular black tea in it. You're going to have to drink it all yourself, and I'm going to have to boil more water for the single cup I wanted (and offered) in the first place.
It sounds so petty. But really, it makes me absolutely mental to tell someone what I want or need, and have my words completely ignored. And so I wind up digging in my heels firmly on things that don't really matter, or don't seem to, because pushing back, hard, is the way to manage Shireen. I am so tired of dealing with people who push on boundaries and have to be pushed back.
I would like to have more friends. Things like this visit make me fear that I am not actually a good friend, that perhaps I too demonstrate the behaviors that annoy me in Shireen, that I am over-sensitive and still not a very nice person. I have to remind myself that I have made friends as an adult, and that those friends do not make me irritable and defensive.
25 June 2009
verdoyant
You know, I'm really liking that espaliered tree simile. I'm not even sure, at this point, what a three-dimensional life would look like, for me. I'm still growing in the directions I'm used to, working on projects I've had going for awhile, trying to finish things.
But that's what would happen to such a tree. And then in a new growth cycle, it would put out new shoots in the new directions. They would at first be small shoots. They'd grow, in time.
So I can just do what I'm doing, and wait for new growth when it happens. It feels right to think of it that way, instead of wondering what I should do to grow, what I might want. I'm just going to enjoy being a tree.
But that's what would happen to such a tree. And then in a new growth cycle, it would put out new shoots in the new directions. They would at first be small shoots. They'd grow, in time.
So I can just do what I'm doing, and wait for new growth when it happens. It feels right to think of it that way, instead of wondering what I should do to grow, what I might want. I'm just going to enjoy being a tree.
19 June 2009
[elle] avait déplu à ma grand’mère
I come from a long-lived family. When my mother died, she was younger than any of my grandparents, and than all but one of hers, at their deaths. She still reached what most people would consider a good age, past the Biblically allotted span. But since her own mother nearly hit the century mark, my mother outlived my grandmother by only 10 years.
I was surprised when I thought of that, and worked the sums several ways, but it's true. For most of her life, into her own old age, my mother had a mother.
And if medical history is anything to go by, and barring accidents, I will do without a mother for half, or something less than half, of my life.
Several of my friends were in their early twenties, or even their teens, when their mothers died. They've lived their whole adult lives in that absence. Their mothers didn't see their graduations, their weddings, their children. They've found ways of being mothers that do not involve comparisons, that do not include interference from the last generation.
Interference, or maybe I should be more neutral and say interaction, was common between my grandmother and my mother. Much less so, I believe, between my grandmother and my aunt. My grandmother was not repeating patterns from her own life; my great-grandmother died when my grandmother was in her early teens (bearing 10 children might have had something to do with it). My grandmother was raised by her older sisters. Perhaps with her older daughter she reenacted something more like those relationships; or maybe my aunt's personality did not invite enmeshment; or possibly my mother's emotional problems meant that my grandmother felt she needed to be more involved in my mother's life.
I know only by hearsay of what went on before I was born. I know my grandmother helped out a great deal in our house, when my mother suffered from post-partum depression that got worse with each child. I know my grandparents, between them, for us grandchildren, sewed clothes and quilts, created wooden blocks from scrap lumber, built dolls' houses, refinished furniture, knitted socks, supplied homegrown vegetables and fruit, and slipped quarters into little hands.
It may sound idyllic. Looking back, I see the love in action. But my grandparents were grim, taciturn people, who never hugged or caressed us, who rarely even smiled, who compared us unfavorably to our cousins (we later learned we were held up as examples to those same cousins), who apparently kissed us at parting with a sense of duty, not of affection. They were also old-fashioned and rigid in their morals and their expectations of behavior. My mother spent much of her life running interference between them and us, so we wouldn't shock them, so they wouldn't condemn us, so that, nonetheless, the three generations would have each other.
My mother talked to my grandmother on the phone, every day, as far back as I can remember and as long as I lived at home. Probably much longer. I assumed they were close, that my mother depended on her mother, that they shared similar values.
But no. When I went underground, giving my mother what she wanted to see rather than what I am, I was following my own mother's pattern. After my grandmother died (and to a lesser extent, before), my mother began to complain of her. The phone calls were checking up on her. My grandmother had always spied on her, manipulated, tried to control her life, choose her friends, make my mother in the image of what my grandmother wanted. Even my father, who had always been a devoted son-in-law, depicted my grandmother as "a monster."
I have no idea what the truths are. My grandmother lived with Sales Sib for some years, in advanced age. Sales Sib found her not manipulative, but charmingly indirect. For instance, she refused, for politeness's sake, to ask her hosts (as she saw them) to add anything to the grocery list on her behalf: it would look, Sales Sib thought, like criticism of their care of her. But she confided to a visitor that she liked vanilla ice cream. After that, they stocked vanilla ice cream in the freezer.
This is partly regional, part generational, part personality. I used to speak this language more fluently. Q is from a very direct part of the country; I am now a direct speaker, and I used to have to remind myself, on visits, that when my mother asked if I wanted a cup of tea, it meant that she wanted one. And it seems odd that my mother criticized in her own mother what she herself did with me, and with others. In some ways, she re-wrote the script, it's true. She did not seriously expect me to leave Q to look after her, as my grandmother, about twenty years ago, seriously (at least, as my mother told it) suggested that my mother leave my father to live with her.
Before my mother got sick, I fully expected to have her with me till I was myself elderly. This was always in the back of my mind, in years of therapy, that we had to work out some modus vivendi for a long life, not just for a decade or so. Even after she got sick, I continued to think in the long term, partly as denial, but partly because her illness was not one with a clear and well-defined progress. It hits different people in various ways. It was only a few years ago that I realized we were looking at, well, a few years.
Among the three generations, then, we've covered the spectrum: loss of a mother early, loss of a mother very late, loss of a mother in mid-life. I think our mothers, or lack of them, were crucial in identity formation for all of us. I did my best to find other mothers, as well: friends' mothers, therapists, doctoral mentors, other models for how to be. I feel as if I'm teetering on the edge of a psychotherapeutic cliche here, one I loathe: I do not want to blame my parents for all my problems, or, really, any of them. I moved away, I made my own choices, I am an adult.
But it is so odd to see, now, the patterns, the way my mother and I had our own version of her relationship with her mother; the ways that, even in rebellion, we reacted against things so as to shape ourselves differently than we might have had those rebellion-sparkers not existed. I don't think I see the whole story even yet. As so often when I write about my mother, I feel like there's something else to say, just around the corner, that I haven't yet understood.
I feel, sometimes, like an espaliered tree whose wall has collapsed. The tree is fine. It's sturdy, well-rooted, not going anywhere. But unless the gardener continues to intervene, its branches, formerly constrained to two dimensions, can now branch out in three. Backwards and forwards, not just side to side. I could still constrain myself to what I was. I'd like to feel what three-dimensional life is like.
* * *
I guess one of the things around the corner is that I wish I felt more grief and more affection, instead of this relief, the cessation of tension (for which I can think of no good English word), the sense of opening possibilities.
I was surprised when I thought of that, and worked the sums several ways, but it's true. For most of her life, into her own old age, my mother had a mother.
And if medical history is anything to go by, and barring accidents, I will do without a mother for half, or something less than half, of my life.
Several of my friends were in their early twenties, or even their teens, when their mothers died. They've lived their whole adult lives in that absence. Their mothers didn't see their graduations, their weddings, their children. They've found ways of being mothers that do not involve comparisons, that do not include interference from the last generation.
Interference, or maybe I should be more neutral and say interaction, was common between my grandmother and my mother. Much less so, I believe, between my grandmother and my aunt. My grandmother was not repeating patterns from her own life; my great-grandmother died when my grandmother was in her early teens (bearing 10 children might have had something to do with it). My grandmother was raised by her older sisters. Perhaps with her older daughter she reenacted something more like those relationships; or maybe my aunt's personality did not invite enmeshment; or possibly my mother's emotional problems meant that my grandmother felt she needed to be more involved in my mother's life.
I know only by hearsay of what went on before I was born. I know my grandmother helped out a great deal in our house, when my mother suffered from post-partum depression that got worse with each child. I know my grandparents, between them, for us grandchildren, sewed clothes and quilts, created wooden blocks from scrap lumber, built dolls' houses, refinished furniture, knitted socks, supplied homegrown vegetables and fruit, and slipped quarters into little hands.
It may sound idyllic. Looking back, I see the love in action. But my grandparents were grim, taciturn people, who never hugged or caressed us, who rarely even smiled, who compared us unfavorably to our cousins (we later learned we were held up as examples to those same cousins), who apparently kissed us at parting with a sense of duty, not of affection. They were also old-fashioned and rigid in their morals and their expectations of behavior. My mother spent much of her life running interference between them and us, so we wouldn't shock them, so they wouldn't condemn us, so that, nonetheless, the three generations would have each other.
My mother talked to my grandmother on the phone, every day, as far back as I can remember and as long as I lived at home. Probably much longer. I assumed they were close, that my mother depended on her mother, that they shared similar values.
But no. When I went underground, giving my mother what she wanted to see rather than what I am, I was following my own mother's pattern. After my grandmother died (and to a lesser extent, before), my mother began to complain of her. The phone calls were checking up on her. My grandmother had always spied on her, manipulated, tried to control her life, choose her friends, make my mother in the image of what my grandmother wanted. Even my father, who had always been a devoted son-in-law, depicted my grandmother as "a monster."
I have no idea what the truths are. My grandmother lived with Sales Sib for some years, in advanced age. Sales Sib found her not manipulative, but charmingly indirect. For instance, she refused, for politeness's sake, to ask her hosts (as she saw them) to add anything to the grocery list on her behalf: it would look, Sales Sib thought, like criticism of their care of her. But she confided to a visitor that she liked vanilla ice cream. After that, they stocked vanilla ice cream in the freezer.
This is partly regional, part generational, part personality. I used to speak this language more fluently. Q is from a very direct part of the country; I am now a direct speaker, and I used to have to remind myself, on visits, that when my mother asked if I wanted a cup of tea, it meant that she wanted one. And it seems odd that my mother criticized in her own mother what she herself did with me, and with others. In some ways, she re-wrote the script, it's true. She did not seriously expect me to leave Q to look after her, as my grandmother, about twenty years ago, seriously (at least, as my mother told it) suggested that my mother leave my father to live with her.
Before my mother got sick, I fully expected to have her with me till I was myself elderly. This was always in the back of my mind, in years of therapy, that we had to work out some modus vivendi for a long life, not just for a decade or so. Even after she got sick, I continued to think in the long term, partly as denial, but partly because her illness was not one with a clear and well-defined progress. It hits different people in various ways. It was only a few years ago that I realized we were looking at, well, a few years.
Among the three generations, then, we've covered the spectrum: loss of a mother early, loss of a mother very late, loss of a mother in mid-life. I think our mothers, or lack of them, were crucial in identity formation for all of us. I did my best to find other mothers, as well: friends' mothers, therapists, doctoral mentors, other models for how to be. I feel as if I'm teetering on the edge of a psychotherapeutic cliche here, one I loathe: I do not want to blame my parents for all my problems, or, really, any of them. I moved away, I made my own choices, I am an adult.
But it is so odd to see, now, the patterns, the way my mother and I had our own version of her relationship with her mother; the ways that, even in rebellion, we reacted against things so as to shape ourselves differently than we might have had those rebellion-sparkers not existed. I don't think I see the whole story even yet. As so often when I write about my mother, I feel like there's something else to say, just around the corner, that I haven't yet understood.
I feel, sometimes, like an espaliered tree whose wall has collapsed. The tree is fine. It's sturdy, well-rooted, not going anywhere. But unless the gardener continues to intervene, its branches, formerly constrained to two dimensions, can now branch out in three. Backwards and forwards, not just side to side. I could still constrain myself to what I was. I'd like to feel what three-dimensional life is like.
* * *
I guess one of the things around the corner is that I wish I felt more grief and more affection, instead of this relief, the cessation of tension (for which I can think of no good English word), the sense of opening possibilities.
16 June 2009
rose . . . violette . . .rougeatre
Another way I'm not French: I don't understand, in fact I completely reject, the idea that one's underwear should match.
I pay more attention in warm weather, when my outer clothing is thinner and there is less of it. And when there is plenty of color outdoors. But in cold weather, you might see me enter the gym wearing a grey sweater, long black skirt, black knee-high boots, all very tasteful, discreet, timeless, dull.
If you followed me to the locker room, you'd see the neutrals reveal a turquoise bra, purple pants, pink camisole and red tights. A little tropical excitement to enliven a cold day.
I pay more attention in warm weather, when my outer clothing is thinner and there is less of it. And when there is plenty of color outdoors. But in cold weather, you might see me enter the gym wearing a grey sweater, long black skirt, black knee-high boots, all very tasteful, discreet, timeless, dull.
If you followed me to the locker room, you'd see the neutrals reveal a turquoise bra, purple pants, pink camisole and red tights. A little tropical excitement to enliven a cold day.
08 June 2009
mal élevée
Sometimes I don't realize I'm in a mood till I've snapped at someone.
I wanted to select rolls from a bin at the supermarket. Someone approached from the opposite direction, then stood in front of the bins, hovering without taking anything. I waited. I wasn't in any particular hurry.
"Did you want something?" she said.
"I was waiting to get at the rolls," I said.
"Oh! Well, sorry!" she said, but in the sort of tone in which you say, "Well, excu-u-u-se me!"
And what popped out of my mouth was, "Jeez, lady, I was waiting for you, get a grip!"
"Lady! I'm not a lady!" she muttered, moving away.
I did manage not to say, "Well, that's obvious."
I wanted to select rolls from a bin at the supermarket. Someone approached from the opposite direction, then stood in front of the bins, hovering without taking anything. I waited. I wasn't in any particular hurry.
"Did you want something?" she said.
"I was waiting to get at the rolls," I said.
"Oh! Well, sorry!" she said, but in the sort of tone in which you say, "Well, excu-u-u-se me!"
And what popped out of my mouth was, "Jeez, lady, I was waiting for you, get a grip!"
"Lady! I'm not a lady!" she muttered, moving away.
I did manage not to say, "Well, that's obvious."
27 May 2009
la flèche gothique d’une église
I am afraid of heights. Nonetheless, I feel compelled to climb things.
Church towers are a particular favorite. They aren’t really dangerous. One could slip and fall back down the time-slick stones of a spiral staircase, but it’s not like the risk of falling off a cliff with jagged rocks at the bottom. All the same, my knees go shaky and my breath catches with more than the effort of climbing, and my head swims slightly, as I look out the arrow slits or down from the catwalks that cross the interior of a dome.
At the top, I get a close-up look at the gargoyles. I admire the eighteenth-century graffiti, announcing in beautifully, carefully carved handwriting that M. le Colonel Un Tel was here with Madame la Comtesse de Chose. And I take in the view, of distant green or violet hills, of close-in rooftops and windows fringed with striped geraniums, behind which I glimpse a cat washing, a woman brushing her hair, a man smoking. I imagine their apartments and what it would be like to live in them. Despite my dizziness, I have once more refused to let fear dictate my actions.
I’m afraid of heights, but I climb anyway because I love the challenge and the views.
I have similar feelings about travel. I have never left on a trip with anything but reluctance. I am afraid of flying, I resist change, I fear becoming ill away from home, I am not good at meeting new people. The night before I left on a drive across six climate zones to go to graduate school, I was sure I was ruining my life. That and other life-enhancing experiences have allowed me to keep asserting my will over my fear. With greater experience, I know I’ll be glad I went. I also know that I will spend much of my time abroad lonely, uncomfortable, and grouchy.
But I love the challenge, and the views.
I’m never successful at adopting foreign ways of seeing; I always wind up aware of how deeply American I am, how resistant even to the usual tourist responses of initial enchantment with different ways of doing things. Nonetheless, I see my home and my normal life in a new light, and I value that shift in perspective. At the very least, I get to see myself as someone who has travelled, who has lived elsewhere, who is comfortable negotiating the subway systems of several major cities in a handful of different languages.
I’ve spent the past week (when not writing) immersed in books and blogs about living in the countries I hope my research will eventually take me to. I got really angry with one narrator who, after one year happily living in a foreign country, refused an extension on her contract to teach English. She was returning to someone who would not make her happy, who had cheated on her. Don’t do it, I said, stay, keep living this life.
Of course, in my twenties, I would have gone home, too. Indeed, I might never have left the U.S. In my late teens, I had an unexpected opportunity to spend 10 weeks in a country whose language I was studying, with a group of people I liked. It didn’t occur to me to seize it. I wanted to stay with Gilbert, idiot that I was. Gilbert and I were almost finished, anyway; it would have been a cleaner and happier break had I gone. It would have changed my life, and later I regretted having been such a stick in the mud.
In some ways, it’s easier to travel when you’re young and unfettered. But it can also be harder. If your identity is unfixed, it can be scary to feel all the changes happening rapidly; if you don’t have many belongings, you can easily pick up and go, but you also have very little to anchor you; if you don’t have a partner, you can take up with a foreign one and learn the language faster, but that means either a casual attitude to the relationship or another whole set of frightening possibilities for change. The older I get, the easier it is to travel. I know who I am. I have Q to go home to. Exposure to a different culture is interesting, an adventure, but it is not going to change me overnight to a different person. I still need my stuff, but I can get by with less of it. Having more money than in student days helps. I wish I had been the sort of twenty-something who could happily sleep on the floor of a bookstore in exchange for sweeping it, but I was not. Now I can buy comfort, and physical comfort goes some way to ease emotional disorientation.
And now I’m feeling really adventurous (well, for me). Q wants a year in France; bon, ça va; but what about other places? How could we . . . ? Well, what if we both taught English? Q is older than I am and will retire sooner; even though most of the English teachers in the world seem to be twenty-somethings figuring out what to do with their lives, we could be grandparently grey-haired teachers. No doubt the young people will patronize us—how cute, how adventurous, how different from my grandma!—but that would probably happen if we stayed home, too. I want enough of a job that I feel I have a place, that I am more than a tourist, but not so much to do that I can’t also spend a lot of time walking the streets, climbing the church towers, eating the specialties of the place. I want to go with Q, so when I’m exhausted from living in another language I have someone to talk to, someone who really gets me. I want to avoid the loneliness of being abroad on my own, and some of the discomfort and grumpiness.
There are things to do and animals to care for, Here; we won’t pack up and go next week, or next year. We’ll have to figure out a lot of things, including what to do with the stuff. Teaching English in Europe with Q would be a timid way of travelling, compared to (say) my oldest nephew’s experiences in Asia. It’s climbing church towers, not rapelling down cliffs. But that’s my particular flavor of challenge. Rock climbers often speak of the views, but I’ve never heard one comment on the eighteenth-century graffiti.
Church towers are a particular favorite. They aren’t really dangerous. One could slip and fall back down the time-slick stones of a spiral staircase, but it’s not like the risk of falling off a cliff with jagged rocks at the bottom. All the same, my knees go shaky and my breath catches with more than the effort of climbing, and my head swims slightly, as I look out the arrow slits or down from the catwalks that cross the interior of a dome.
At the top, I get a close-up look at the gargoyles. I admire the eighteenth-century graffiti, announcing in beautifully, carefully carved handwriting that M. le Colonel Un Tel was here with Madame la Comtesse de Chose. And I take in the view, of distant green or violet hills, of close-in rooftops and windows fringed with striped geraniums, behind which I glimpse a cat washing, a woman brushing her hair, a man smoking. I imagine their apartments and what it would be like to live in them. Despite my dizziness, I have once more refused to let fear dictate my actions.
I’m afraid of heights, but I climb anyway because I love the challenge and the views.
I have similar feelings about travel. I have never left on a trip with anything but reluctance. I am afraid of flying, I resist change, I fear becoming ill away from home, I am not good at meeting new people. The night before I left on a drive across six climate zones to go to graduate school, I was sure I was ruining my life. That and other life-enhancing experiences have allowed me to keep asserting my will over my fear. With greater experience, I know I’ll be glad I went. I also know that I will spend much of my time abroad lonely, uncomfortable, and grouchy.
But I love the challenge, and the views.
I’m never successful at adopting foreign ways of seeing; I always wind up aware of how deeply American I am, how resistant even to the usual tourist responses of initial enchantment with different ways of doing things. Nonetheless, I see my home and my normal life in a new light, and I value that shift in perspective. At the very least, I get to see myself as someone who has travelled, who has lived elsewhere, who is comfortable negotiating the subway systems of several major cities in a handful of different languages.
I’ve spent the past week (when not writing) immersed in books and blogs about living in the countries I hope my research will eventually take me to. I got really angry with one narrator who, after one year happily living in a foreign country, refused an extension on her contract to teach English. She was returning to someone who would not make her happy, who had cheated on her. Don’t do it, I said, stay, keep living this life.
Of course, in my twenties, I would have gone home, too. Indeed, I might never have left the U.S. In my late teens, I had an unexpected opportunity to spend 10 weeks in a country whose language I was studying, with a group of people I liked. It didn’t occur to me to seize it. I wanted to stay with Gilbert, idiot that I was. Gilbert and I were almost finished, anyway; it would have been a cleaner and happier break had I gone. It would have changed my life, and later I regretted having been such a stick in the mud.
In some ways, it’s easier to travel when you’re young and unfettered. But it can also be harder. If your identity is unfixed, it can be scary to feel all the changes happening rapidly; if you don’t have many belongings, you can easily pick up and go, but you also have very little to anchor you; if you don’t have a partner, you can take up with a foreign one and learn the language faster, but that means either a casual attitude to the relationship or another whole set of frightening possibilities for change. The older I get, the easier it is to travel. I know who I am. I have Q to go home to. Exposure to a different culture is interesting, an adventure, but it is not going to change me overnight to a different person. I still need my stuff, but I can get by with less of it. Having more money than in student days helps. I wish I had been the sort of twenty-something who could happily sleep on the floor of a bookstore in exchange for sweeping it, but I was not. Now I can buy comfort, and physical comfort goes some way to ease emotional disorientation.
And now I’m feeling really adventurous (well, for me). Q wants a year in France; bon, ça va; but what about other places? How could we . . . ? Well, what if we both taught English? Q is older than I am and will retire sooner; even though most of the English teachers in the world seem to be twenty-somethings figuring out what to do with their lives, we could be grandparently grey-haired teachers. No doubt the young people will patronize us—how cute, how adventurous, how different from my grandma!—but that would probably happen if we stayed home, too. I want enough of a job that I feel I have a place, that I am more than a tourist, but not so much to do that I can’t also spend a lot of time walking the streets, climbing the church towers, eating the specialties of the place. I want to go with Q, so when I’m exhausted from living in another language I have someone to talk to, someone who really gets me. I want to avoid the loneliness of being abroad on my own, and some of the discomfort and grumpiness.
There are things to do and animals to care for, Here; we won’t pack up and go next week, or next year. We’ll have to figure out a lot of things, including what to do with the stuff. Teaching English in Europe with Q would be a timid way of travelling, compared to (say) my oldest nephew’s experiences in Asia. It’s climbing church towers, not rapelling down cliffs. But that’s my particular flavor of challenge. Rock climbers often speak of the views, but I’ve never heard one comment on the eighteenth-century graffiti.
22 May 2009
un même oubli efface tout
My mother's friends created a scrapbook about her. They collected things she wrote to them, found pictures, found information about reunions she attended and events she took part in, scanned it all and made copies for my father and all us children. It's very thoughtful of them, and I think they probably enjoyed doing it. I have expressed profuse thanks.
My mother's friends know me through her. They know her stories about me, her version of me, slightly tempered, for some, by observation when I visited and, on that last trip, took her to a reunion with them. Therefore they think that I am a devoted daughter, who would find consolation in a book of my mother's writings and her friends' reminiscences of her.
Well, I am glad to know she had friends who appreciated her humor and personality (which I already did know). Everyone should have such friends.
But that thing is going in a drawer where I don't have to see it. Maybe one day I will appreciate it. Now, however, I am finally free of that woman. Free of inconveniently timed phone calls, free of demands for affection that I did not really feel, free of the bizarre projections and assumptions about me, Q, my job, and other aspects of my life.
I don't want to celebrate my mother's life. I want to live mine.
I got off the phone with one of her friends, and noticed Peter Gabriel on my inner soundtrack. After listening for a bit, the words I wanted came clearly:
You can keep your damned scrapbook. My real life has come to take me home.
My mother's friends know me through her. They know her stories about me, her version of me, slightly tempered, for some, by observation when I visited and, on that last trip, took her to a reunion with them. Therefore they think that I am a devoted daughter, who would find consolation in a book of my mother's writings and her friends' reminiscences of her.
Well, I am glad to know she had friends who appreciated her humor and personality (which I already did know). Everyone should have such friends.
But that thing is going in a drawer where I don't have to see it. Maybe one day I will appreciate it. Now, however, I am finally free of that woman. Free of inconveniently timed phone calls, free of demands for affection that I did not really feel, free of the bizarre projections and assumptions about me, Q, my job, and other aspects of my life.
I don't want to celebrate my mother's life. I want to live mine.
I got off the phone with one of her friends, and noticed Peter Gabriel on my inner soundtrack. After listening for a bit, the words I wanted came clearly:
You can keep your damned scrapbook. My real life has come to take me home.
20 May 2009
comme une fleur dans l'eau
I've had an insight. I'm going to keep this vague. But, basically, in the long term, the research I'm doing now can grow tentacles that will take me to two European cities, and possibly (if I publish enough and play my cards right) get me back to Eden.
It is a long-term plan, and an ambitious one. Luck will play a part (will I find the thing I really need to find?). But with a lot of hard work and a little luck, it could work.
The most important thing is that this plan motivates me. Getting to be a full professor, getting awards at my current school, these are things I've thought about as goals but, honestly, they don't excite me. I feel like I ought to want them, and I would enjoy them if they happened, but they don't feel like something that will drive me to my desk.
Living in two different, beautiful, exciting cities in Europe, living in two different languages, that is a goal worth working for.
And you know how I feel about Eden. I'll need luck there too, but if the research pans out, there is a connection that would make me a far more attractive candidate to those search committees made up of angels with flaming swords.
This is worth the whole damned mostly-wasted sabbatical year. Now I know what I want, going forward. Now I have hope.
It is a long-term plan, and an ambitious one. Luck will play a part (will I find the thing I really need to find?). But with a lot of hard work and a little luck, it could work.
The most important thing is that this plan motivates me. Getting to be a full professor, getting awards at my current school, these are things I've thought about as goals but, honestly, they don't excite me. I feel like I ought to want them, and I would enjoy them if they happened, but they don't feel like something that will drive me to my desk.
Living in two different, beautiful, exciting cities in Europe, living in two different languages, that is a goal worth working for.
And you know how I feel about Eden. I'll need luck there too, but if the research pans out, there is a connection that would make me a far more attractive candidate to those search committees made up of angels with flaming swords.
This is worth the whole damned mostly-wasted sabbatical year. Now I know what I want, going forward. Now I have hope.
16 May 2009
se divertir
Wine-tasting. Scotch tasting. Sci-fi movie of the moment. Back to our friends' house for dinner: artichokes, flatbread with assorted toppings, more wine. Dessert. It was a long day and a festive one.
05 May 2009
dans une mauvaise voie
The only thing keeping me from taking down some of the posts I wrote last fall is a feeling that, despite my own embarrassment about them, they may be useful to other people: life is not a nineteenth-century novel. People don't necessarily get all saintly and lovable as they approach death. The people who are doing the best they can for elderly, ailing, cantankerous folks may be seething with anger and resentment that's got nowhere to go, rather than inspired to saintly acts of self-sacrifice and forgiveness. I wish like hell my mother had been more like Marcel's grandmother, but she wasn't, and neither was I. I wish I had less of a temper, and I wish I had been more polite to many people, and I wish I'd done less crying in public, but there it is.
I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say. I'm embarrassed, but I'm not sorry, I guess. That was my truth, and if expressing it is any consolation to someone else in the same situation who feels bad about being temperamental, rude and weepy, then it's worth it. So there.
I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say. I'm embarrassed, but I'm not sorry, I guess. That was my truth, and if expressing it is any consolation to someone else in the same situation who feels bad about being temperamental, rude and weepy, then it's worth it. So there.
02 May 2009
bruit de tonnerre
This past week, I had to go to campus, both for a meeting and to collect some books. The meeting was purgatorial. Not in itself; I've been to far longer, more boring, more contentious meetings. But being in a room full of people, when I've lived a fairly secluded life for the past year, was hard. I'm not used to it, and it makes me dread going back to teaching.
I've had ideas about teaching; I've written them down, along with the names of the books I ordered for the fall; they'll get worked into syllabi and assignments sometime in the next few months. But I haven't thought at all about the experience of being in the classroom, and how much I hate groups of strangers. Maybe I should offer to do a guest-gig for a couple of people during summer school, so classes don't come as such a shock to the system next fall.
At the moment, I hate some of my colleagues, too. Hint: if you ask someone how sabbatical is going, and the answer is some sort of snarl or brush-off (yes, I have forgotten my manners in all this solitude, yes, I realize this is a problem), the correct response is "I'm sorry to hear that," or "I'm sorry it's not going well," not "Are you serious?" or "You can't mean it, how has it really been?"
I swear, some of these people can't imagine that anything bad might happen to anyone they know. Or maybe they can't believe personal life might overshadow work (or that, if it did, a person might admit it).
I'm trying to think up polite, jovial, partially-true responses to the question that will allow me to evade the real answer. My favorite so far is, "I've caught up on my social life."
I've had ideas about teaching; I've written them down, along with the names of the books I ordered for the fall; they'll get worked into syllabi and assignments sometime in the next few months. But I haven't thought at all about the experience of being in the classroom, and how much I hate groups of strangers. Maybe I should offer to do a guest-gig for a couple of people during summer school, so classes don't come as such a shock to the system next fall.
At the moment, I hate some of my colleagues, too. Hint: if you ask someone how sabbatical is going, and the answer is some sort of snarl or brush-off (yes, I have forgotten my manners in all this solitude, yes, I realize this is a problem), the correct response is "I'm sorry to hear that," or "I'm sorry it's not going well," not "Are you serious?" or "You can't mean it, how has it really been?"
I swear, some of these people can't imagine that anything bad might happen to anyone they know. Or maybe they can't believe personal life might overshadow work (or that, if it did, a person might admit it).
I'm trying to think up polite, jovial, partially-true responses to the question that will allow me to evade the real answer. My favorite so far is, "I've caught up on my social life."
28 April 2009
quant aux fidèles
I suppose publishing a post once a week isn't so awful. Nonetheless, I'm thinking of instituting a regime loosely based on the page 123 meme: every so often (every day probably is not realistic; every other? Twice a week?) I open a volume of Marcel to a random page, pick out a phrase that for some reason speaks to me, and compose a post about it. Just so my handful of readers know I'm still here.
Today, actually, I was inspired by comments to a post by Historiann, about Mary Wollstonecraft. In the comments, Historiann asks about family history in a feminist context:
"If we acknowlege that feminism was important, that means acknowledging that women have historically been oppressed. And that means raising all kinds of uncomfortable psychological questions about our families and our mothers and grandmothers in particular–did they really love us? Did they have us voluntarily? Were they happy with their lives, or just victims of history?–that we don’t really want to think about."
I've written before, I think, about my mother's and grandmother's experiences with child-bearing, and my own preference for not doing so. It's easy for me to answer the first two questions in ways that aren't psychologically uncomfortable, but the last one spins the answers differently.
My grandmother had two children. The first nearly killed her, and then she struggled (successfully) to get that child though infancy. My grandfather did not want to risk his wife's life in another pregnancy. In a time when birth control for women was not easily available, he took responsibility for getting to the drugstore for rubbers. My grandmother wanted another child, though. Family folklore is unclear on whether she finally talked him into it or if she took one of her sewing pins to his contraceptive stash, but she did finally have my mother.
My mother's psychological oddities were visible at least from her teens. Perhaps she should not have had children. Certainly it would have been easier for her not to have as many of us as she bore. She suffered hideous post-partum depression that got worse every time. I'm not sure what my father's role here was, but it seems to have been less pro-active than my grandfather's.
I think for the first two, "having children" was just what young couples did. But why did they keep going? Did my father think my mother had got better? Did he not realize she'd have to go off her meds to have more children? Did she just wear him down with insistence? Did he long for more children? I have to say, though I criticize my dad's temper and some of his child-rearing techniques, he really does love babies and is very good with them; and even in an era when fathers weren't expected to change diapers or do dirty work, he changed, he cleaned up, he walked floors, he cooked. So I don't think he represents "the patriarchy" here.
But "desire for children" is not a simple want. What made these two women want to risk either their lives or their psychological health to have more children? Was it purely a personal, biological and/or psychological wish for another baby? Or was it conditioned by family members other than their husbands, or by their communities, or the country's ethos at the time they were bearing children? My grandmother was one of eleven, a farm family. As my mother was born, the Great Depression was starting; limiting a family was a very sensible idea, at that point. None of her siblings had families as large as the one they were born into, but the younger ones stopped at two, while the older ones had three or four. So I can imagine that for my grandmother, the hard times said "stop" but early conditioning might have said "more."
My sibs and I are all baby boomers, born in a growing economy when women were going home to leave post-war jobs to returning veterans. And yet my mother did not live in a community that boasted lots of large families; her sister had only two (did my mother need to do something "better" than her older sister?). There might have been some general social pressure, but not from her immediate surroundings. Medical advice was against having some of us, at a time when doctors were more godlike than they are now.
My mother had trouble persevering at tasks. She was a talented writer, but disorganized and easily discouraged. She was very proud of her children, and maybe it really was best that she put her energy into us rather than, say, writing. Two of us have published vastly more than she managed to do, though her regular output of letters certainly set us a good example. We encouraged her to do more, and she did take a lot of pride in the writing she did in her last twenty-five years, some of which she published. But she wanted acclaim, not a regular writing gig. I think she hoped children would be a means to acclaim: that we'd love her and think she was wonderful.
I was clear from my early teens that I did not want children. It started, as I struggled with depression that I thought everyone went through (why in hell do people dismiss teenaged misery as "everyone feels that way, it will pass"?), with a conviction that I could not in conscience inflict such experiences on anyone else. Later my reasons became more sophisticated, based partly on self-analysis (impatient, easily fatigued, ambitious), partly on awareness of the way the world seemed to shut down the possibilities for women with children (this has changed a lot during my lifetime, and I could have been part of that change, but I wasn't willing to take the risk), partly on my perception that my mother's life and creativity had been damaged by devoting much of her life to children and home-making.
Looking back, my perspective shifts considerably. At the risk of under-valuing the importance of institutional support, I think personality has a lot to do with whether or not children "ruin one's life." Yes, if you can't get childcare you may have to stay home: but one person will stay home and be miserable, and another will stay home, establish a child-care cooperative with the neighbors, and start a home-based business. My mother had plenty of time to be a writer while raising us, if she had taken her craft more seriously. For whatever reason (and I think depression and her other problems are good reasons), she didn't. My grandmother worked any number of jobs while raising her daughters, from running a clothing store to working in a plant nursery: occupations associated with women, sure, but they gave her consequence in the world, as well as a lot of knowledge she could use for herself when she no longer had to work. My grandmother made the best of a bad hand; my mother couldn't see how to play hers. But both saw the world as a dangerous place, and I absorbed their caution, appying the lesson to myself. I had choices they didn't have, I thought, and I failed to recognize the bravery of the choices they made.
My grandmother didn't want to have it all. She expected to be a farm wife, and adapted as best she could to losing the farm. My mother, raised to be a single schoolteacher who would support her old parents, wanted a "normal" life. I was fiercely rebellious, determined to clarify my mother's murky boundaries between her and me by wanting other things entirely. But did I really want them, or just want to be not-my-mother?
The evidence, to me, suggests both that, if not completely happy with our lives, at least we got most of what we wanted; and that we were all victims of history.
Sometimes world history, sometimes family history.
Today, actually, I was inspired by comments to a post by Historiann, about Mary Wollstonecraft. In the comments, Historiann asks about family history in a feminist context:
"If we acknowlege that feminism was important, that means acknowledging that women have historically been oppressed. And that means raising all kinds of uncomfortable psychological questions about our families and our mothers and grandmothers in particular–did they really love us? Did they have us voluntarily? Were they happy with their lives, or just victims of history?–that we don’t really want to think about."
I've written before, I think, about my mother's and grandmother's experiences with child-bearing, and my own preference for not doing so. It's easy for me to answer the first two questions in ways that aren't psychologically uncomfortable, but the last one spins the answers differently.
My grandmother had two children. The first nearly killed her, and then she struggled (successfully) to get that child though infancy. My grandfather did not want to risk his wife's life in another pregnancy. In a time when birth control for women was not easily available, he took responsibility for getting to the drugstore for rubbers. My grandmother wanted another child, though. Family folklore is unclear on whether she finally talked him into it or if she took one of her sewing pins to his contraceptive stash, but she did finally have my mother.
My mother's psychological oddities were visible at least from her teens. Perhaps she should not have had children. Certainly it would have been easier for her not to have as many of us as she bore. She suffered hideous post-partum depression that got worse every time. I'm not sure what my father's role here was, but it seems to have been less pro-active than my grandfather's.
I think for the first two, "having children" was just what young couples did. But why did they keep going? Did my father think my mother had got better? Did he not realize she'd have to go off her meds to have more children? Did she just wear him down with insistence? Did he long for more children? I have to say, though I criticize my dad's temper and some of his child-rearing techniques, he really does love babies and is very good with them; and even in an era when fathers weren't expected to change diapers or do dirty work, he changed, he cleaned up, he walked floors, he cooked. So I don't think he represents "the patriarchy" here.
But "desire for children" is not a simple want. What made these two women want to risk either their lives or their psychological health to have more children? Was it purely a personal, biological and/or psychological wish for another baby? Or was it conditioned by family members other than their husbands, or by their communities, or the country's ethos at the time they were bearing children? My grandmother was one of eleven, a farm family. As my mother was born, the Great Depression was starting; limiting a family was a very sensible idea, at that point. None of her siblings had families as large as the one they were born into, but the younger ones stopped at two, while the older ones had three or four. So I can imagine that for my grandmother, the hard times said "stop" but early conditioning might have said "more."
My sibs and I are all baby boomers, born in a growing economy when women were going home to leave post-war jobs to returning veterans. And yet my mother did not live in a community that boasted lots of large families; her sister had only two (did my mother need to do something "better" than her older sister?). There might have been some general social pressure, but not from her immediate surroundings. Medical advice was against having some of us, at a time when doctors were more godlike than they are now.
My mother had trouble persevering at tasks. She was a talented writer, but disorganized and easily discouraged. She was very proud of her children, and maybe it really was best that she put her energy into us rather than, say, writing. Two of us have published vastly more than she managed to do, though her regular output of letters certainly set us a good example. We encouraged her to do more, and she did take a lot of pride in the writing she did in her last twenty-five years, some of which she published. But she wanted acclaim, not a regular writing gig. I think she hoped children would be a means to acclaim: that we'd love her and think she was wonderful.
I was clear from my early teens that I did not want children. It started, as I struggled with depression that I thought everyone went through (why in hell do people dismiss teenaged misery as "everyone feels that way, it will pass"?), with a conviction that I could not in conscience inflict such experiences on anyone else. Later my reasons became more sophisticated, based partly on self-analysis (impatient, easily fatigued, ambitious), partly on awareness of the way the world seemed to shut down the possibilities for women with children (this has changed a lot during my lifetime, and I could have been part of that change, but I wasn't willing to take the risk), partly on my perception that my mother's life and creativity had been damaged by devoting much of her life to children and home-making.
Looking back, my perspective shifts considerably. At the risk of under-valuing the importance of institutional support, I think personality has a lot to do with whether or not children "ruin one's life." Yes, if you can't get childcare you may have to stay home: but one person will stay home and be miserable, and another will stay home, establish a child-care cooperative with the neighbors, and start a home-based business. My mother had plenty of time to be a writer while raising us, if she had taken her craft more seriously. For whatever reason (and I think depression and her other problems are good reasons), she didn't. My grandmother worked any number of jobs while raising her daughters, from running a clothing store to working in a plant nursery: occupations associated with women, sure, but they gave her consequence in the world, as well as a lot of knowledge she could use for herself when she no longer had to work. My grandmother made the best of a bad hand; my mother couldn't see how to play hers. But both saw the world as a dangerous place, and I absorbed their caution, appying the lesson to myself. I had choices they didn't have, I thought, and I failed to recognize the bravery of the choices they made.
My grandmother didn't want to have it all. She expected to be a farm wife, and adapted as best she could to losing the farm. My mother, raised to be a single schoolteacher who would support her old parents, wanted a "normal" life. I was fiercely rebellious, determined to clarify my mother's murky boundaries between her and me by wanting other things entirely. But did I really want them, or just want to be not-my-mother?
The evidence, to me, suggests both that, if not completely happy with our lives, at least we got most of what we wanted; and that we were all victims of history.
Sometimes world history, sometimes family history.
20 April 2009
la tristesse de la vie
You know, if you've read this blog for awhile, that I miss the place where I grew up. I call it Eden, here, not only because I think of it as paradise but because I feel it is hopelessly lost. The academic job market . . . is what it is. I'm tenured, I haven't published all that much, I don't really want to be an administrator. The conclusion is obvious.
Moreover, Q is from Here, and loves it Here. Q understands my feelings about Eden, having also undergone exile, but has no interest in living full-time in Eden, and no interest in even part-time life in other places that appeal to me. And I don't want to have an LDR. So even if I suddenly published 5 books at once and were offered the job of my dreams, I'm not sure that would help matters any. Well, I guess with 5 books at once, Edenic State might cut a deal in which I could do all my teaching in a single semester and be Here for six months a year.
Also, I do really like my job and the academic life. I don't want to do something else just so I can move back to Eden; and it's hard to imagine another job that would give me even the chance of a Persephone-esque existence divided between two places.
It may be "realistic" and "practical" to accept that I'm stuck here. But trying to do so makes me unhappy, even when I frame it as a conscious choice that allows me a good relationship and a good job.
So, although I am basically (I think) a practical person, and although I cannot see how to have my cake and eat it too (that is, have an academic job and live full-time with Q and live in Eden) I am going to accept that that is my dream. I can't really stomach the New-Agey language of "putting it out to the universe," but in some sense, I think that's what I'm doing. I have no idea how to get what I want, but I need to let myself want it.
I'd rather be sad about not having what I want than twisted up from trying to make myself not want it.
Moreover, Q is from Here, and loves it Here. Q understands my feelings about Eden, having also undergone exile, but has no interest in living full-time in Eden, and no interest in even part-time life in other places that appeal to me. And I don't want to have an LDR. So even if I suddenly published 5 books at once and were offered the job of my dreams, I'm not sure that would help matters any. Well, I guess with 5 books at once, Edenic State might cut a deal in which I could do all my teaching in a single semester and be Here for six months a year.
Also, I do really like my job and the academic life. I don't want to do something else just so I can move back to Eden; and it's hard to imagine another job that would give me even the chance of a Persephone-esque existence divided between two places.
It may be "realistic" and "practical" to accept that I'm stuck here. But trying to do so makes me unhappy, even when I frame it as a conscious choice that allows me a good relationship and a good job.
So, although I am basically (I think) a practical person, and although I cannot see how to have my cake and eat it too (that is, have an academic job and live full-time with Q and live in Eden) I am going to accept that that is my dream. I can't really stomach the New-Agey language of "putting it out to the universe," but in some sense, I think that's what I'm doing. I have no idea how to get what I want, but I need to let myself want it.
I'd rather be sad about not having what I want than twisted up from trying to make myself not want it.
11 April 2009
couleur de lilas
It strikes me that the purple-and-grey color scheme looks like half-mourning, and I don't like it. Hence the new look.
I don't have a lot to report. Brain is okay, body is achy, but nothing serious; I'd rather ignore it than complain about it. The animals are as well as they ever are, Q is working as much as ever, things are pretty normal, in short. I think I need to find something spectacular to do before school starts again. Something different. Travel to somewhere I've never been, or lessons in something I've never done. Must think. Suggestions welcome.
I don't have a lot to report. Brain is okay, body is achy, but nothing serious; I'd rather ignore it than complain about it. The animals are as well as they ever are, Q is working as much as ever, things are pretty normal, in short. I think I need to find something spectacular to do before school starts again. Something different. Travel to somewhere I've never been, or lessons in something I've never done. Must think. Suggestions welcome.
04 April 2009
temps perdu
Merde. I have indeed been out of things. It finally occurred to me to check the e-mail account associated with this blog, and Russian Violets actually sent me an invitation to read hers---back in December, when I was about to space out for the next several months. Now, of course, it has expired.
Sorry, RV, and thanks, and would you send me another invite even though I was so rude as not to RSVP last time?
Sorry, RV, and thanks, and would you send me another invite even though I was so rude as not to RSVP last time?
28 March 2009
des parents qui ont fait les fous
Sometimes it seems I attract crazies, though maybe I'm just not as good at getting rid of them as other people are. By "crazies," I don't mean people who are actually dangerous, just, you know, weird, out-there, different. Too intense. Okay as long as they're medicated. Often bright, creative, interesting, but also needy, attention-seeking, time-sucking.
I had one student who was in many ways a delight, but who landed in the hospital following a suicide attempt following allegations of a romantic relationship with a TA in another department. I never did figure out what was going on there. I didn't want to know. There was another, highly intelligent, eager to go to graduate school, unable to hear any cautionary advice about the possible effects on one's family, one's income, and one's prospects of an actual job; I wrote letters of recommendation praising intelligence and ability, and wondered whether I should raise any red flags about emotional issues. I didn't, in part because I had no evidence, only gut instinct; but in the wrong department, this person could either be highly destructive or be destroyed.
My instincts are good. I spent most of my life dealing with someone who was "off," not normal, intense, needy, inappropriate in many of her interactions with other people. I can recognize who's normal and who's not, who needs help and isn't getting it, who is trying hard to "pass" and does so by thinking through what is appropriate, not by actually having the appropriate responses of a normal person.
And I know many of the faculty will say they are "not normal," or are on Prozac, or whatever. I don't mean you. There is not one person in my department who strikes me as fragile in this way, and only a couple in nearby divisions. Some are eccentric, some are high-strung, some are certainly on anti-depressants, but the people I work with are basically okay.
But the students with problems come to my office, solicit my opinions, ask for recommendation letters, want to get involved with research projects, do their best to cross every boundary they can find. (I do not mean good, intelligent, enthusiastic students, though these people are all of that.) They know, somehow, that I know that the crazy can also be intelligent, self-aware, and entertaining. They know that I know that the crazy deserve respect and compassion. They know that I will see the humanity under the nerve-shrilling not-okayness, and deny my own instincts to back off.
I have colleagues who say don't get sucked in, send them packing, not our jobs, we're not trained. And I don't get sucked in to the point of real involvement, of seeing them outside my office (with the door wide open), or talking about my personal life, or doing anything that looks even remotely like providing therapy. Not my job, and I'm not trained. But if they want to practice acting like normal people in my office, isn't that part of my job? Even if it makes me uncomfortable? They're not actually doing anything I could complain of. It is my office hours. There's no line in the hallway.
But it makes me uncomfortable that I feel I need to do things that make me uncomfortable. I've had decades of suppressing my discomfort with my mother, trying to treat her like a "normal" mother, doing all the boundary-setting for both of us. I'm tired. It's not so much the giving that is tiring as the withholding, the repeated drawing of lines, the meting-out of response: I will give you this much and no more, you cannot have all of me.
Dealing with the crazies can eventually make you crazy.
I had one student who was in many ways a delight, but who landed in the hospital following a suicide attempt following allegations of a romantic relationship with a TA in another department. I never did figure out what was going on there. I didn't want to know. There was another, highly intelligent, eager to go to graduate school, unable to hear any cautionary advice about the possible effects on one's family, one's income, and one's prospects of an actual job; I wrote letters of recommendation praising intelligence and ability, and wondered whether I should raise any red flags about emotional issues. I didn't, in part because I had no evidence, only gut instinct; but in the wrong department, this person could either be highly destructive or be destroyed.
My instincts are good. I spent most of my life dealing with someone who was "off," not normal, intense, needy, inappropriate in many of her interactions with other people. I can recognize who's normal and who's not, who needs help and isn't getting it, who is trying hard to "pass" and does so by thinking through what is appropriate, not by actually having the appropriate responses of a normal person.
And I know many of the faculty will say they are "not normal," or are on Prozac, or whatever. I don't mean you. There is not one person in my department who strikes me as fragile in this way, and only a couple in nearby divisions. Some are eccentric, some are high-strung, some are certainly on anti-depressants, but the people I work with are basically okay.
But the students with problems come to my office, solicit my opinions, ask for recommendation letters, want to get involved with research projects, do their best to cross every boundary they can find. (I do not mean good, intelligent, enthusiastic students, though these people are all of that.) They know, somehow, that I know that the crazy can also be intelligent, self-aware, and entertaining. They know that I know that the crazy deserve respect and compassion. They know that I will see the humanity under the nerve-shrilling not-okayness, and deny my own instincts to back off.
I have colleagues who say don't get sucked in, send them packing, not our jobs, we're not trained. And I don't get sucked in to the point of real involvement, of seeing them outside my office (with the door wide open), or talking about my personal life, or doing anything that looks even remotely like providing therapy. Not my job, and I'm not trained. But if they want to practice acting like normal people in my office, isn't that part of my job? Even if it makes me uncomfortable? They're not actually doing anything I could complain of. It is my office hours. There's no line in the hallway.
But it makes me uncomfortable that I feel I need to do things that make me uncomfortable. I've had decades of suppressing my discomfort with my mother, trying to treat her like a "normal" mother, doing all the boundary-setting for both of us. I'm tired. It's not so much the giving that is tiring as the withholding, the repeated drawing of lines, the meting-out of response: I will give you this much and no more, you cannot have all of me.
Dealing with the crazies can eventually make you crazy.
17 March 2009
[ils] n'avaient pu réussir dans leur carrière
Q and I have a friend who is getting divorced, living with a friend temporarily, soon to move to an apartment in the sort of town most people want to get out of. Our friend said, "This isn't where I thought I'd be at this point in my life."
"Which of us is?" I asked.
They turned on me. "You're a lot closer to it than we are."
Well, when you rub my nose in it, I guess I can admit that. The Ph.D., the tenure, the handful of publications, the on-going efforts to do research and publish . . . I emphasize the efforts, and the failure to live up to my youthful promise, but it's true that I'm still in this profession and still in there pitching. And I still have Q and all our animals, unlike our friend. I guess that makes me one of "les deux premiers [qui] passaient pour des gens du monde."
"Which of us is?" I asked.
They turned on me. "You're a lot closer to it than we are."
Well, when you rub my nose in it, I guess I can admit that. The Ph.D., the tenure, the handful of publications, the on-going efforts to do research and publish . . . I emphasize the efforts, and the failure to live up to my youthful promise, but it's true that I'm still in this profession and still in there pitching. And I still have Q and all our animals, unlike our friend. I guess that makes me one of "les deux premiers [qui] passaient pour des gens du monde."
04 March 2009
la lecture, la rêverie, les larmes
I keep wondering, had I been trained in some other discipline, or just well-trained in my own, would I be better at articulating the questions that guide my research and which I need to answer in publications?
Which is to say, What Now, that organization is very difficult for me. I do a lot of pre-writing, and try to build up a pattern out of details. Then I keep rearranging: to understand my point about that, first you need to know about this . . . but no, before this you need the other . . . now my main point doesn’t appear till page 6, that can’t be good . . . start with a thesis statement . . . but then how do I introduce the background stuff that paves the way to the thesis?
One of the things I mourn about the project-that-won’t-work is that it had a lovely structure. The relationship among chapters was clear; the arrangement within chapters was parallel; it made a lot of sense for what I was trying to do. I think I’m finding my way to a new plan. In place of a chronological arrangement (since my chronology is now off), I can do a readers-circle sort of thing; but then, where do I start? Even if the central figure is clear, is there a logical progression from that person to the others I need to talk about? Chronological organization is so linear, and so nicely imposes a clear progression from one topic to another.
I wonder if my organizational problems stem from starting in the wrong place. I tend to begin with whatever sparks a reaction of "Ooh, shiny!" and then try to figure out what question would let me spend the most time with the shiny object. Is it possible to start with a clearly defined question and just set out to answer it? Or is the nature of literary research finding meaning in the fuzzy?
La lecture, la reverie, les larmes, le merde.
Which is to say, What Now, that organization is very difficult for me. I do a lot of pre-writing, and try to build up a pattern out of details. Then I keep rearranging: to understand my point about that, first you need to know about this . . . but no, before this you need the other . . . now my main point doesn’t appear till page 6, that can’t be good . . . start with a thesis statement . . . but then how do I introduce the background stuff that paves the way to the thesis?
One of the things I mourn about the project-that-won’t-work is that it had a lovely structure. The relationship among chapters was clear; the arrangement within chapters was parallel; it made a lot of sense for what I was trying to do. I think I’m finding my way to a new plan. In place of a chronological arrangement (since my chronology is now off), I can do a readers-circle sort of thing; but then, where do I start? Even if the central figure is clear, is there a logical progression from that person to the others I need to talk about? Chronological organization is so linear, and so nicely imposes a clear progression from one topic to another.
I wonder if my organizational problems stem from starting in the wrong place. I tend to begin with whatever sparks a reaction of "Ooh, shiny!" and then try to figure out what question would let me spend the most time with the shiny object. Is it possible to start with a clearly defined question and just set out to answer it? Or is the nature of literary research finding meaning in the fuzzy?
La lecture, la reverie, les larmes, le merde.
20 February 2009
mon lorgnon
I have spent an appalling amount of money on new lenses. Not new glasses, just the lenses, and that's with my insurance allowance.
I wanted to get new frames. I thought I'd enjoy a new look. I tried on a lot of frames, but couldn't find anything I liked as well as the old ones.
Remember the 1980s? (Anybody?) Those big bug-eyed glasses actually suited my face. (Well, I probably looked like Saffy on Absolutely Fabulous, but there you are, I really am Saffy, looking after my batty mother and all.) I had a huge bubble-shaped pair in sort of a coral-tortoiseshell effect, and a slightly smaller, slightly squared-off pair in burgundy, and a similar pair in bright blue. I don't know how my nose survived the weight of the lenses. The present fashion for smaller lenses is certainly kinder to nose and ears.
But for some years now I've worn rimless glasses, because those rectangular MLA-standard I-am-a-serious-intellectual glasses look terrible on me. And now I have to wonder: would writing be easier if I had the proper accessories? Should I have a pair of reading/computer glasses made with those serious-intellectual frames?
No doubt it would be cheaper to get some new pencils and similar desk furniture.
I wanted to get new frames. I thought I'd enjoy a new look. I tried on a lot of frames, but couldn't find anything I liked as well as the old ones.
Remember the 1980s? (Anybody?) Those big bug-eyed glasses actually suited my face. (Well, I probably looked like Saffy on Absolutely Fabulous, but there you are, I really am Saffy, looking after my batty mother and all.) I had a huge bubble-shaped pair in sort of a coral-tortoiseshell effect, and a slightly smaller, slightly squared-off pair in burgundy, and a similar pair in bright blue. I don't know how my nose survived the weight of the lenses. The present fashion for smaller lenses is certainly kinder to nose and ears.
But for some years now I've worn rimless glasses, because those rectangular MLA-standard I-am-a-serious-intellectual glasses look terrible on me. And now I have to wonder: would writing be easier if I had the proper accessories? Should I have a pair of reading/computer glasses made with those serious-intellectual frames?
No doubt it would be cheaper to get some new pencils and similar desk furniture.
19 February 2009
ne pas exposer les choses
In my current state, I don't want to go to campus. I don't want to go to conferences. I don't want to lay eyes on another academic. Don't ask me how my sabbatical is going. I wish I were spending the year in some foreign library, with a cool fellowship, so I wouldn't ever see any of my colleagues. The librarians would say hello, but I'd never have any serious conversations with anyone, so I would never have to admit that the book project is in such bad shape.
Why am I still reading academic blogs? I guess as part of continuing to try to imagine myself as an academic, despite the severe case of imposter syndrome.
Thank you, What Now, for this post. Even though you sound very happy with the project, it's complicated enough to make me feel as if there's some hope I'll find a (complicated) path through my mess.
Why am I still reading academic blogs? I guess as part of continuing to try to imagine myself as an academic, despite the severe case of imposter syndrome.
Thank you, What Now, for this post. Even though you sound very happy with the project, it's complicated enough to make me feel as if there's some hope I'll find a (complicated) path through my mess.
13 February 2009
je fus cruellement déçu[e]
If Hilaire is going, then I have to come back.
I'm not sure that makes sense, but I don't want to be another blogger who goes to Facebook.
I think this may get back to being a blog about writing, and in particular about working through anxiety and trouble with writing. Because the big disappointment lately is a new discovery, one that might be very cool, except it isn't. I visited a research library I've wanted to get to for some time, and there I found something that invalidates the central argument of my book-in-progress.
Now, it was bad enough that my sabbatical is halfway over and I haven't made more progress; I've had a lot of experiences that interfere with good work habits and normal brain function, this year. Indeed, the turmoil may be a sort of silver lining: at least I haven't wasted time producing material I'll have to trash. But anyway, my sabbatical is now halfway over, and my proposal, my first chapter, and most of the research I've done this year towards the other planned chapters now are useless.
There's plenty of salvageable material in notes and conference papers, but I need to do a lot of thinking not just about what I can do with it but also about what form it will take. Do I still have a book project, or does the salvage become articles? If it's a book, what is the central idea that holds it all together? If not, what do I work on first? Is there some clear trajectory, and if so, what?
I have tenure; this is not like having a desperately-needed-for-tenure project go south. Nonetheless, it's wildly discouraging to be at mid-career, trying to assert one's continuing significance to the field, finally to feel on the verge of making a large, visible contribution, and then having that idea go poof. The negative self-talk is incredible. I should have gone to that library sooner, I should have asked someone about this cache of stuff, I should have thought, etc, etc. I even hear my mother saying, as she did years ago, "Why go to all that work when you can just marry a professor and have the lifestyle?" (Trying be comforting, my yoga teacher recently said, "Oh, she's still with you." I recoiled. My mother has finally let go of me, and I want to let go of her. I can't tell you the relief of no longer worrying about her all the time.)
I'm going back to reading. I'm finding that when I pick up scholarly books I know I've read, I can't remember anything much about them. So I'm fostering a return to scholarly habits by reading. And thinking. It does not feel like writing time, not yet. The dust needs to settle, so I can see how big the pieces are, what's worth picking up, dusting off, and fixing, what will just have to be hauled away.
Read. Think. Act like a scholar. I used to feel like one. I will again.
I'm not sure that makes sense, but I don't want to be another blogger who goes to Facebook.
I think this may get back to being a blog about writing, and in particular about working through anxiety and trouble with writing. Because the big disappointment lately is a new discovery, one that might be very cool, except it isn't. I visited a research library I've wanted to get to for some time, and there I found something that invalidates the central argument of my book-in-progress.
Now, it was bad enough that my sabbatical is halfway over and I haven't made more progress; I've had a lot of experiences that interfere with good work habits and normal brain function, this year. Indeed, the turmoil may be a sort of silver lining: at least I haven't wasted time producing material I'll have to trash. But anyway, my sabbatical is now halfway over, and my proposal, my first chapter, and most of the research I've done this year towards the other planned chapters now are useless.
There's plenty of salvageable material in notes and conference papers, but I need to do a lot of thinking not just about what I can do with it but also about what form it will take. Do I still have a book project, or does the salvage become articles? If it's a book, what is the central idea that holds it all together? If not, what do I work on first? Is there some clear trajectory, and if so, what?
I have tenure; this is not like having a desperately-needed-for-tenure project go south. Nonetheless, it's wildly discouraging to be at mid-career, trying to assert one's continuing significance to the field, finally to feel on the verge of making a large, visible contribution, and then having that idea go poof. The negative self-talk is incredible. I should have gone to that library sooner, I should have asked someone about this cache of stuff, I should have thought, etc, etc. I even hear my mother saying, as she did years ago, "Why go to all that work when you can just marry a professor and have the lifestyle?" (Trying be comforting, my yoga teacher recently said, "Oh, she's still with you." I recoiled. My mother has finally let go of me, and I want to let go of her. I can't tell you the relief of no longer worrying about her all the time.)
I'm going back to reading. I'm finding that when I pick up scholarly books I know I've read, I can't remember anything much about them. So I'm fostering a return to scholarly habits by reading. And thinking. It does not feel like writing time, not yet. The dust needs to settle, so I can see how big the pieces are, what's worth picking up, dusting off, and fixing, what will just have to be hauled away.
Read. Think. Act like a scholar. I used to feel like one. I will again.
20 January 2009
à la promenade
I think I might as well make it official: I'm on hiatus.
I'm physically well; I'm not prostrated by grief; but I am certainly in a transitional period. I'll be back when I know where "back" is.
I'm physically well; I'm not prostrated by grief; but I am certainly in a transitional period. I'll be back when I know where "back" is.
06 January 2009
se promener
I have decided that exercise, immersion in hot water, and chocolate all need to be applied earlier in my day.
31 December 2008
[elle] va reprendre des forces peu à peu
We're not doing anything much tonight (though I've already had a couple of glasses of champagne). Hang out. Maybe watch TV or do a jigsaw puzzle. And, obviously, I'm browsing blogs and thinking about a New Year.
Dr. Crazy writes about her resolutions here. It's interesting to think about what comes easily to each of us. I have no trouble with exercise and eating well, because the payoff (or its opposite) is immediate and obvious in both cases: if I do yoga, get my aerobic exercise, and eat properly, I can sleep and I feel reasonably well tomorrow. If I don't do those things, I have trouble sleeping and tomorrow I will feel achy, tired and cranky. I never think about big-picture health goals like losing weight or lowering my cholesterol, because the immediate short-term gratification ensures that I don't actually have to worry about those problems. This probably sounds horribly smug, but I don't mean it that way. I'm very bad about long-term goals and big pictures (I'm still an associate professor, right). The only reason I'm pretty fit and healthy is because I get immediate feedback from my fibromyalgia if I'm not exercising and so on. If I did have trouble with cholesterol or something I can't immediately feel, it would be much harder for me to address that.
But Dr. Crazy clearly responds to some things very differently than I do. Grade a pile of papers or fix dinner? She tackles the grading. I'd fix dinner. The grading we have always with us, in my view, but dinner pays off immediately. Article deadline or laundry? The deadline wins, for her. For me, well, it probably depends on how far along the article is. If I can really finish it by forgoing the laundry, yeah, sure; but if I'm going to need an extension anyway, then I'd like to have clean clothes while I write (and fix dinner, and go to the gym . . .).
So just as she's trying to think of physical well-being as non-negotiable (in the way I have had to, for years), I need to think about ways of approaching work that will make it easier for me to finish projects. What's the immediate feedback for doing work today, when the project is a big long-term one? It would probably be more useful for me to forget the big long-term-ness of whatever I'm working on and focus on the satisfaction of being able to say "I wrote a paragraph today" or "I read an article today." The trick is that I don't want to write a series of unrelated paragraphs---I know there is a big picture---yet somehow I want to focus on the immediate results (feeling good tomorrow) rather than a more nebulous goal.
I guess I think that writing, which I really do enjoy, should be its own reward, as some people really enjoy running. I don't so much enjoy the exercise, just how I feel afterwards. But when I get done writing, I feel like I should have done more. How do I get to the feeling-good-tomorrow of writing, or of teaching, for that matter?
I wonder if it would help to print out each day's work and create a visible pile of achieved writing. It seems worth trying. Perhaps I should put a gold star on each sheet, while I'm at it. I'm sorry, trees. I'll use scratch paper and a small font, but I am going to have to try this. I need something to help me find my new balance in the world.
Dr. Crazy writes about her resolutions here. It's interesting to think about what comes easily to each of us. I have no trouble with exercise and eating well, because the payoff (or its opposite) is immediate and obvious in both cases: if I do yoga, get my aerobic exercise, and eat properly, I can sleep and I feel reasonably well tomorrow. If I don't do those things, I have trouble sleeping and tomorrow I will feel achy, tired and cranky. I never think about big-picture health goals like losing weight or lowering my cholesterol, because the immediate short-term gratification ensures that I don't actually have to worry about those problems. This probably sounds horribly smug, but I don't mean it that way. I'm very bad about long-term goals and big pictures (I'm still an associate professor, right). The only reason I'm pretty fit and healthy is because I get immediate feedback from my fibromyalgia if I'm not exercising and so on. If I did have trouble with cholesterol or something I can't immediately feel, it would be much harder for me to address that.
But Dr. Crazy clearly responds to some things very differently than I do. Grade a pile of papers or fix dinner? She tackles the grading. I'd fix dinner. The grading we have always with us, in my view, but dinner pays off immediately. Article deadline or laundry? The deadline wins, for her. For me, well, it probably depends on how far along the article is. If I can really finish it by forgoing the laundry, yeah, sure; but if I'm going to need an extension anyway, then I'd like to have clean clothes while I write (and fix dinner, and go to the gym . . .).
So just as she's trying to think of physical well-being as non-negotiable (in the way I have had to, for years), I need to think about ways of approaching work that will make it easier for me to finish projects. What's the immediate feedback for doing work today, when the project is a big long-term one? It would probably be more useful for me to forget the big long-term-ness of whatever I'm working on and focus on the satisfaction of being able to say "I wrote a paragraph today" or "I read an article today." The trick is that I don't want to write a series of unrelated paragraphs---I know there is a big picture---yet somehow I want to focus on the immediate results (feeling good tomorrow) rather than a more nebulous goal.
I guess I think that writing, which I really do enjoy, should be its own reward, as some people really enjoy running. I don't so much enjoy the exercise, just how I feel afterwards. But when I get done writing, I feel like I should have done more. How do I get to the feeling-good-tomorrow of writing, or of teaching, for that matter?
I wonder if it would help to print out each day's work and create a visible pile of achieved writing. It seems worth trying. Perhaps I should put a gold star on each sheet, while I'm at it. I'm sorry, trees. I'll use scratch paper and a small font, but I am going to have to try this. I need something to help me find my new balance in the world.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
