falling with style.
this round of grad school has been an exercise in sheer determination in the face of what always seem like utterly insurmountable odds. i find myself fighting constantly for breath; trying to scrape together enough thoughts on a similar topic to call it a paper or a presentation. fighting my conviction that i don't have what it takes. battling all the cognitive dissonance i experience with some regularity as a result of my bizarre mental-emotional constellation of feminism, mormonism, intellectualism, and the never-absent need for marriage. i invariably end up a crying mess at more than one moment each quarter. and then i think that i just can't do it and i don't know why i ever tried and i should quit. but i keep coming back. either i am a masochist or i am really driven. when i'm enjoying my studies as much as i have been recently, i know i'm doing it because i love the thinking and the teaching and the exploring ideas. i love seeing my students work through ideas and i love thinking new things because of what they said. but when i'm stressed to the breaking point and i'm lonely and i realize that there is no way humanly possible to complete all my work, i collapse into a weepy mess--something that happens unfortunately often in front of other people.

regardless of my mental state, school seems like an exercise in survival. i've begun to reach a point where i realize that this is just the way it is and that it means nothing about my own abilities. grad school just kind of stinks, to put it oh-so-eloquently. today as i walked home from teaching a lesson which mercifully went well, given the fact that i hadn't really thought about it until immediately before teaching it, i called my little sister to say hi. and as i was explaining to her how my week has been (and it's been hellish), i thought of that scene in toy story where buzz "flies" and woody responds, "that's not flying ... that's falling with style!" it occurred to me that grad school is exactly that. it's not flying. it's falling--with style. taking the jump off some high point and hoping that as you fall you find ideas and thoughts and works and projects that give you enough bounce to make it look like you're flying, even though in reality all you're doing is plummeting down, drawn by the inexorable pull of gravity.

maybe, if i fall with enough style, i'll make it through and even end up with a job some day. here's to being stylish.

read.
i've been meaning to do this for a while. a running series of posts on books that i'm reading or books that i love and think that you (meaning everyone) should read. no time like the present.

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
i had to read this for a seminar i'm in right now and was pleasantly surprised. it's incredibly engaging from the beginning. and presents a fascinating look at the french revolution. in addition to telling a moving story, it does really interesting things by doubling france and england, paris and london, and two of the male characters. the use of the doubles allows for an interesting commentary on not only the nature of france, but also of england. well worth reading--both for entertainment and for scholarship.

An Unquiet Mind, Kay Redfield Jamison
this is a beautiful book that functions as both a memoir and a scholarly treatment of manic-depressive disorder. Jamison herself suffers from manic-depressive disorder and is a trained psychiatrist, so her perspective is unique. it's a compelling look at mental illness.

Black Zodiac, Charles Wright
a lovely collection of poetry by one of my favorite poets. wright manages to capture stories in his poetry without ever presenting narratives. his representations of place are pristine and striking. he also does interesting things with the form of his poetry. he's a poet i return to often.

and you thought you knew me...
i got this from dora and while i don't always do these things, her very first answer made me laugh hard enough that i decided i owed her. with no further ado...

four jobs i've had in my life
sticker-putter-onner for a make-up company
secretary x3
events planner, designer, marketing, editor, stepper-up-to-the plate
warper of young, impressionable minds (teacher)

four movies i can watch over and over
a room with a view (make me melt, george)
dirty rotten scoundrels
emma (i'm in love with Mr. Knightley)
13 conversations about one thing (leaves me wondering every time)

four places i have lived
palace court (study abroad in london)
hooville (or charlottesville to the uninitiated; america's eden)
beantown (boston)
a bubble (provo)

four tv shows i love to watch
law & order (of any stripe)
arrested development (curse fox!)
the office (a newly acquired taste)
the daily show/the colbert report

four places i have been on vacation
the hiltons (not the hotels; the lakes--in the high sierras)
charleston, sc
paris (france, not idaho)
new york city (a regular destination of mine)

four of my favorite dishes
chicken saag (indian)
chicken mango curry (thai)
sweet sticky rice (thai)
steak & potatoes with a side of asparagus (at sullivan's)

four websites i visit daily besides blogs
google.com
uci.edu
ldslinkup.com
wikipedia.org

four places i would rather be right now
wandering through new york city
deep in conversation with a friend
entranced by a stage production of one of my favorite plays
with my sisters and mom; location doesn't really matter

four bloggers i am tagging
brookewill
and that's it, cause all my friends are also all the bloggers i know and they've been tagged.

windy.
so very windy that last night our house shook with each gust and the palm trees shed fronds which thumped onto our roof and the glass rattled in the windows. this morning i woke to a beautiful, freshly clean world of dream-blue skies and green green trees arching and swaying.

i love the winds. more than any other gift the world gives me. even more than rain, and that's saying a lot. i love the feel of the wind against my skin. like a kiss from God. i love the way they make the trees speak. whispering secrets or even shreaking pain. they make clouds scud across the sky. or they leave the sky radiantly crystal clear. the make me remember that there are mountains in southern California--beautiful mountains with snow on their peaks.

i lean into them as i walk and fight with my skirt as they whip it around my legs and they are, for me, an insistent reminder of God's grace.

charity: a reflection in three parts.


christmas. at some point just before christmas, my mom told me that my dad had invited two women from their ward to join us for christmas eve. my immediate response was to be peeved. i like my holidays quiet. i don't want to entertain a bunch of people and feel obliged to talk to them if i don't feel like it. i hate small talk with strangers. i don't like trying to find something i have in common with them to talk about. and i made it known to my mom that i wished we could just have a quiet holiday.

but my dad had already made the invitation. and one of the women had agreed. and the other one called on christmas eve to tell us she was rearranging other plans so she could come and be with us. needless to say, i was not pleased.

but once something can't be changed i'm not one to be all snotty about it. so i set to work and helped my mom prepare all kinds of food and set the table pretty and fold the napkins like lotus flowers. and the two women came and one of them was a bit dour and the other one was a bit effervescent. and i was a bit sulky.

until i stopped worrying about how they were ruining my christmas and instead let myself realize how happy they were to be with us. these two beautiful women who didn't have families to be with that night. rather than having a christmas eve i had to suffer through, i ended up enjoying myself and the laughter these two women brought with them into our home.


resolution. i don't often make new year's resolutions. i'm not very good at keeping them. but this year i have made one. i am something of a thinker. and i have been trained by my graduate programs to think by taking other people's thoughts apart. breaking ideas down into component parts to see if they work. what results often sounds negative. because it leads me to point out the ways in which another person's work is inadequate or wrong. this is in part a necessary evil. to make one's way in the world of academia, it's vital to find an opening. some niche that you can make your own. and that can only happen when you show that everyone else has failed to see things your way (which is, of course, the correct way).

but i don't like the fact that this response leaves others feeling like i'm always trying to show them how their thoughts are lacking, how they are weak. it makes it sound like i'm condescending and i don't like being condescending.

i still want to think critically. and i still want to recognize the ways in which an idea may not be sufficient. but i want to read more generously. i want to go with someone in their thoughts and their argument, try to understand it. find the ways in which their thoughts fit with mine, areas where they overlap, places at which there is a gap between them. and try to adjust my own thinking to incorporate the good of theirs while maintaining the good of mine. it is time for more intellectual charity in my life.


god & i. i have been thinking lately about how i have dealt with the fact that i am not where i think i should be. i think i should be married. with a baby. or maybe even two. of course, that's fairly irrational given that i've never even had a legitimate opportunity to marry (i don't count the time a guy i knew showed up at my house and told me god wanted me to marry him as legitimate). but i still haven't let the irrationality of my expectation prevent me from being angry at god for not giving me what i think i deserve. i have tried not to be angry. because i'm pretty sure getting angry at god doesn't accomplish a whole lot. at least nothing positive. it has certainly worked to undermine my happiness.

a couple of weeks ago i was talking to a friend about this issue. not about my anger. more about the fact that i have essentially reached the conclusion that i will most likely never marry. and i got a little weepy (as i'm prone to do). he looked at me and asked me if my being married is a good thing. the answer seemed so obvious that i looked at him funny and then answered yes. his reply was simple: then pray for it. because we have been told that when we ask god in faith for something which is good, he will give it to us.

i wasn't convinced it was that easy and left the conversation a bit skeptical. but i've been thinking about it. about this idea that if we exercise faith and ask god for good things, he will give them to us. that our faith truly is a tool that we can use to bring about good in the world. and i've thought about how i have responded to this particular problem in my life. i certainly have not responded with faith. i have responded with anger and anguish. and with fear. but not with much faith. and it occurs to me that i have not been charitable to god. i have not loved him and believed in his goodness--not where i am concerned. it is time for a more simple faith. trust that god does love me and will provide for me. a more pure love of god--not for what i think he can do for me (that love transforming to anger when he doesn't deliver), but for his essential goodness and mercy and love.

moving.
i'm moving again. 9th time in just over 6 years. i'm pretty damn sick of it. and this one has me a bit torn. i'm moving home again. to live with my parents pretty much indefinitely for the first time in more than 12 years. part of me wants this. i'm so lonely in my own apartment right now, living with someone that i don't know very well and with whom i don't have a whole lot in common. it will be nice to wake up and share breakfast with people i love. and to have someone i can talk to when i get home in the evening. but i'm already missing my own place, the small semblance of having a "real" life that i do have. there is a part of me that clings to having my own place, where i express my own tastes and wants and needs. but one of the costs of that right now is not sharing that place with someone i love. so which do i sacrifice? i don't know. thus the experiment. maybe i'll be back in my apartment in three months. maybe i won't. one thing i do know is that i need to let my hunger for my own, more settled life fire my efforts to finish my degree. the sooner it's done, the sooner i can actually start building my own place in this world, a place that hopefully will feel less transitional.

rain.
last night it rained. with thunder and lightning. i love the world when it rains. everything seems clean. the grass smells alive. even the asphalt smells good. and the lightning amazes me. reminds me of how miraculous and wonderful our world is. even if we do understand the phenomena we see in it. and because we understand them.

i know i shouldn't, for the sake of those living on hills, but i hope we have another wet winter.

perfection.
last night i rediscovered perfection. it's been hot lately. fresh out of the shower, my skin gets clammy. the air in my apartment is still and sticky. night time brings little relief. in fact, it seems to only get hotter in my apartment when it hits 11pm. sleep comes hard. but last night it cooled off for the first time in a week. really cooled off. i climbed into my bed next to my open window and was surprised by the cool touch of my sheets. i had forgotten how lovely a cool, cotton sheet feels. i snuggled down under my cold sheet and blankets and slept easily.

it's strange that cool sheets make me feel cozy. it wasn't hot. they didn't give me relief from heat. but they felt good. it made me think of the goose bumps i get in my hot car. it's black, so the expanse of reflective silver i put in my windshield does little to prevent it from pulsating heat waves on a hot summer day. when i step in on such a day, i close the door and sit for a moment in the breathless heat of the car, watching goose bumps raise on my arms. chills from the heat. i fill my lungs with that hot air and shut my eyes and something in me lets go.

write.
this often happens. i write in my journal. regularly. explore ideas and thoughts and experiences. try to understand myself. and then. silence. sometimes years of it. they always seem to happen when life becomes hardest. when perhaps i need to be writing the most. fleshing out my problems. ranting. weeping. laughing hysterically over odd little things that jolt me out of my funk and make me know, again, that life is good and lovely and beautiful.

it is time to break silence again. one of my best friends told me once that to write is to think. that without writing, one cannot think. i don't know how absolute that statement is, but in some way it is right. i would add that to converse is to think. i have existed thinking only in spurts. randomly. when compelled to because i'd rather converse with my friends than sit a sullen lump. but lately i have realized how much i miss thinking. all the time. hard, laughing, wailing, rigorous, silly, exhilerating, mundane thinking.

so i will write.

sustenance.
yesterday i walked into the canyon. the sun was shining and it was unseasonably warm for february. i had never been up rock canyon before, though i lived within miles of it for years. and i have loved it for years. it is where the day gives birth to sunshine, the light streaming through the canyon illuminating the rocks long before the sun crests the peaks.

at one point, i saw an old car upside down in the gully along the trail. its bottom was rusted, the tires missing, and plants and the earth have claimed it. the bumper was still chrome and the faded blue door had bullet holes in it. i don't know how it got there.

as i walked back out of the canyon i stopped and sat, my back to the sun, on an enormous rock. just listening to the wind. the wind in the mountains is unlike wind anywhere else. it speaks in a soulful but delightful voice of the secrets buried in the mountains. it caresses your cheek at one moment and in the next rages against your body.

before i left the canyon, i climbed up to a rock wall and leaned against it, absorbing the strength of the earth, its peace and its solidness. i kissed the rock and thanked the earth for being mine. and then i returned to my world happier.

haze.
i feel strange in my world right now. i am emerging from the haze of doubt and confusion and sorrow i have been battling with my personal convictions, if not constantly at least consistently, for the last year and a half. this feels beautiful. i feel as if an incredible weight has lifted from my shoulders.

but my realization of how beautiful this world is stands in stark contrast to the ugliness i am seeing in the political climate. i am finding myself engulfed in a haze of rhetoric and intimidation and fear. i remember the day twelve years ago when the u.s. (i suppose it was really the u.n. but it seemed like the u.s. to me at the time) attacked iraq. i was so young and thoughtless. all i knew was that my great nation, which was of course right, had done something and i must support it out of patriotism. and i wondered why my sophomore english teacher wept while she talked about it. and now i find myself dazed at the thought that we may find ourselves doing the same thing twelve years later. except this time i do not have the excuse of youth and innocence to explain my lack of understanding. i have only the cloud of hazy rhetoric with which i have been bombarded for the last six months.

i do not object on principle to the idea of a military strike in iraq. perhaps it is necessary. i do not know. but i wish i could trust the leaders of my nation to act according to fact and truth and with integrity. i cannot. i have heard too much rhetoric. how can i believe that a government leader acts with integrity when he objects to the u.n. allowing a "rogue nation" (one of the horrible members of the "axis of evil") to not comply with its decisions but is willing to act in direct opposition to the u.n.'s decisions himself? in this scenario, might makes right and there is one nation who will rule the world, either through direct or indirect means. how can i believe that president bush actually agreed with the resolution to send inspectors into iraq in order to determine if they are or are not in compliance with u.n. requirements when, a brief four months later, he is willing to throw it all away in order to disarm saddam hussein? how can i see the u.s.'s agreement to the resolution in november as anything but one step among many necessary to achieve its end objective, which is not the disarmament of saddam hussein but rather the use of force to disarm saddam hussein. we are behaving as a child who has decided it knows exactly what it wants and will get it at any cost. or worse, as an adult who knows better, when they can be rational, than to bully those weaker than they into conceding but is doing just that even though they should and do know better.

i object to war on moral grounds. but i am enough of a pragmatist to know that moral grounds will not always solve problems; war is not always avoidable. but i object strenuously to fighting a war when every honorable effort to avoid it has not been made and when the rhetoric of fear is the primary tool for arguing for said war. and no amount of mis-named pragmatism will convince me that i am wrong.

i am afraid. not of terrorists or "evil" nations or the idea of war. rather, i am afraid of the lack of honor and integrity i see at the head of this nation. i am afraid of the thick darkness that comes with the use of rhetoric as a tool rather than the truth. i am afraid of the perversity that will spring from the rhetoric of fear.

adamant.
i read tonight the words of an apostle of the lord, declaring that god's love is conditional upon my obedience. every fiber of my being declared an emphatic NO! i can imagine no teaching more contrary to my belief in and idea of god. he loves me. it matters not what i do or think or say. it matters not how far from him i stray. his love remains. i acknowledge that his blessings are conditional. i acknowledge that eternal life is conditional. i acknowledge that inspiration and revelation are conditional. and i acknowledge that my ability to feel his love is conditional. but the existence of his love is not.

perhaps i split hairs. after all, what does it mean to love if that love cannot be expressed and made known? but i remain adamant; god loves every man, woman and child who has ever lived on this earth regardless of their errors and their sin. not in spite of or even though they have sins. he just loves them. because he sees the absolute beauty at their core. how can one help loving the pure beauty and power it is to be, to exist? and how can god, who sees perfectly and understands all of us, including our potentialities, help loving us? i insist upon this truth: my god loves all humankind. if he did not, he would cease to be god.

inhere.
tonight on this american life, the program was on names. it fascinated me. i have been thinking about names for weeks now, about what it means to be named something and to name yourself something. my name both explicates me and renders me somehow inaccessible. my names, the many names i have, explain who i am to someone who does not know me. they say something about me. i have parents who have been married for forty years. i am a member of a church that believes certain ideas and whose members live in certain ways. i have siblings and nephews and nieces. my names explain my background, my beliefs, and my identity. they allow a stranger to begin to understand me and to become my friend. but my names also build a fence around me--around the essence of who i am--and others stop at the fence, thinking they know me without having truly understood me. because i am mormon, i must necessarily think certain things and act in certain ways. at least i must in others' perceptions of who i am. names provide easy answers as to my being. i believe certain things, think certain things, do certain things. i don't think and don't do and don't believe other things. sometimes the limitations and explanations inherent in the connotation of my names are accurate. many times they are not. but i cannot escape them because others cannot forget them. the true litmus of friendship, of love, is whether a person can get behind my names, my surface identity and begin to understand me, rather than the names that have been assigned to me. this is when i can begin to be free with others. my names are not at my center; they are the periphery. seen from the outside they are one thing; seen from the inside they are another. and seen from the outside they cause problems because they delineate difference and exclusion. but seen from the inside they become beautiful and accepting. a name is a starting point; it provides a context for understanding my soul. but it can only be a starting point. one does not truly understand a name until they can see how it has been redefined by the essence of the named person. i make my names my own, though they may have been given to me by others. when you meet me, you encounter my names first. but then you move inward, towards the real me and when you get inside, you look back and realize that the definition of my names that you once possessed and believed in is not accurate. you begin to see that my names are other because on the inside, i have changed them, fitted them to the contours of my mind and my heart.

i am amelia. and in spite of history, i gave myself that name.

laugh!
today i have been thinking about god, about prayer. i think prayer is laughter, beautiful and raucous. sharing life with god. acknowledgement of all that is good in the world. an exclamation. and it is the sigh of contentment. the peace of living. sometimes it is wailing lamentation. mourning the uglinesses of humankind--so much uglier because it is capable of utter beauty. once in a while it is anger, lashing out in helplessness. but mostly it is laughing communion, making god your friend.

harmony.
i was home last week, in california. a chaotic place but oddly beautiful. so strange. in one yard a sugar maple's leaves are brilliant red, suspended somewhere between living and dead, half of them fallen and the other half obstinately clinging to the tree. around the corner the decorative fruit trees blossom in mad profusion. it is december. these transplants from other climes cannot make sense of the balmy weather, the lack of definition.

when i get on the freeway, i am struck by how confused the humans are, too. i accelerate until i match the pace of others. classical music bringing peaceful beauty into my car in counterpoint to the frantically frenetic pace i am keeping while trying to follow the wildly eratic lines on the freeway. such stark contrast--beautiful and dangerous. the world on the brink of spinning out of control. there is no order to the place. but its very chaos creates an ordering principle of its own, one that liberates so that one being exists independent from the next. one holds on tightly, lagging behind normal. the other dances crazily, absurdly ahead. both beautiful; neither right; but harmonious.