from september 2008:
[My grandmother, whose name was Azile, never let anyone forget that she was actually "Eliza" spelled backwards.
She grew up on a gutted-out plantation site in southern Arkansas, in a tiny pinprick of a town called Lily. Her father worked as a local vetrinarian, but the stories I always enjoyed hearing were the ones about her sisters. There were four of them, all relatively close in age. The pictures I've seen are like something out of a gothic southern novel from the 1930s; the girls are dressed in polka-dot frocks with big skirts and wedge heels, their soft hair coifed and pinned, but set against the flat dullness of their yard, little tufts of weeds everywhere, and the visibly peeling paint of the house behind them...well, it all looks painfully mismatched. They fought a lot. I think it was Lillian Smith, one of the white female writers who tried to make sense of Jim Crow and the Lost Cause in the first decades of the twentieth century, who suggested that nothing defines the southern family more than a delicate balance of refinement and violence. Somehow I have always taken great pride (twisted, right?) in knowing that my mother's family had fit this bill, living tenuously together in a rickety house with Civil War-era teacups, lace hankerchiefs, an old diamond chandelier, and all the great works of literature but certainly not much cash. They killed chickens in the back yard; Azile could remember the sounds of the squawking well into her old age, and I think it had always bothered her a bit. I would bore you to recount all the stories.
Like the time her sister Devonne adopted a pet parrot; apparently it would squeal and talk too late into the night. My grandmother had had enough, it seems, and steeled into the cage late one evening, tossing the poor parrot into the water of the primitive washing machine on the front porch. The next morning, Devonne was, of course, rather revulsed by the news. The story may have been embellished along the way, but some reports of the incident include bits of shattered Coke bottle flying through the air. Yet the fighting was premature, it turned out, because the "damn parrot" had survived the night, swirling around in the soapy water until he had managed to fly away and fit himself nicely unto a branch of a nearby tree.
It's not as if any of this is all that interesting, or all that unique really. But I have always been facinated with the relationship between those four sisters. They are all gone now except for Devonne, who was the youngest; she's amazing and, I think, if she'd been born just twenty years after she was would have been some sort of radical lesbian feminist writer. The four of them loved each other, I have always suspected, with a kind of passion that had to be all on or all off. Maybe it was growing up in the shadow of a time and a place that really didn't exist anymore. Azile knew Shakespeare, but she never could figure out how to work a VCR. And I've always been nervous that somehow that kind of sisterhood might be genetic. I have two older sisters (although by blood, they are both actually half). We share the same mother, and thus, that bloodline. But somehow I think our sisterhood is more modern than that, more evolved. Joan, who is five years older than I am, is perhaps the center of my soul. If I were a ship in need of guidance, she would be my lighthouse, strong and bright in the worst of times. We are drawn to each other for the good and the bad, able to communicate without words. But we use a lot of words anyway. There's no parrot story (although when I was five, Joan did accidentally cut my leg open with a piece of glass from a popcorn bowl), but there is laughter, and there have been plenty of tears, plenty of pain.
Maybe with each successive generation we all get a little bit more normal.
The reason I even thought about all of this today is because I spent a lovely stretch of time with my roommate Meg and her sister Lauren this weekend. Their sisterhood is so in sync, with every squinch of their faces, every smile, every gesture, that I was easily reassured of my convictions--that there is no more compassionate a relationship, no more unconditional a love, than that of a sister. So, a big thank you to both of them for that wonderful gift. And we would have a photograph to commemorate the evening--replete with frosty beer bottles and an Athens night sky--if Lauren's phone/camera had a better flash on it...
Sunday, January 10, 2010
re-post six: ten reasons
i'm happy/freaked out? to report that most of these hold up. except number 5 is a distant memory, thank goodness.
from March 2009:
[My mind perpetually makes and re-makes lists. It's like a running scroll in my poor tired brain.
I came home last night from a great evening, a little sloshy with beer, and wrote these things down:
One--I'm a writer, for better or worse. And the people who've told me that they like my writing all provide the same reason: because I often write in a stream of consciousness and in random, fanciful phrasings. I'm a big ball of abstractness, mind you, and I hope people can live out the mayhem in their own head through some of my words. There's value in that.
Two--I'm not ashamed to like pop culture. I totally dig it when people get excited about things--a movie, a song, a brand of shoe. Culture binds us all together. And just because it's "popular" doesn't mean its inferior. To note, though, I do despise: action movies, video games, and avatars. This all might be mostly because I am a woman and have been conditioned this way. Just kidding. Oh, gender norms rapping on the door again.
Three--I love to cook, but I hate using recipes. Why conform to the measurements of others? Ha. Except, when baking, you kind of have to. Unless you're a genius.
Four--I google everything, effing everything.
Five--I started having nightmares about notecards. It's the comps thing. I've lost all short-term memory and all sanity at this point.
Six--The sight of newly-painted toenails in a sandal...oh heaven.
Seven--I can drink coffee all day any day any time just watch me.
Eight--I have to work at being a good conversationalist. It doesn't come naturally. And that's a holdover from my reclusive, Jane Austen-reading years.
Nine--I have no idea where the rest of this year is going to take me.
Ten--You know what? The only thing that turns me on more than sarcasm is brutal honesty. And yes, I mean in men.
from March 2009:
[My mind perpetually makes and re-makes lists. It's like a running scroll in my poor tired brain.
I came home last night from a great evening, a little sloshy with beer, and wrote these things down:
One--I'm a writer, for better or worse. And the people who've told me that they like my writing all provide the same reason: because I often write in a stream of consciousness and in random, fanciful phrasings. I'm a big ball of abstractness, mind you, and I hope people can live out the mayhem in their own head through some of my words. There's value in that.
Two--I'm not ashamed to like pop culture. I totally dig it when people get excited about things--a movie, a song, a brand of shoe. Culture binds us all together. And just because it's "popular" doesn't mean its inferior. To note, though, I do despise: action movies, video games, and avatars. This all might be mostly because I am a woman and have been conditioned this way. Just kidding. Oh, gender norms rapping on the door again.
Three--I love to cook, but I hate using recipes. Why conform to the measurements of others? Ha. Except, when baking, you kind of have to. Unless you're a genius.
Four--I google everything, effing everything.
Five--I started having nightmares about notecards. It's the comps thing. I've lost all short-term memory and all sanity at this point.
Six--The sight of newly-painted toenails in a sandal...oh heaven.
Seven--I can drink coffee all day any day any time just watch me.
Eight--I have to work at being a good conversationalist. It doesn't come naturally. And that's a holdover from my reclusive, Jane Austen-reading years.
Nine--I have no idea where the rest of this year is going to take me.
Ten--You know what? The only thing that turns me on more than sarcasm is brutal honesty. And yes, I mean in men.
re-post five: that friday on the farm
this is from april 2009, right after a visit to a local eco-farm. i spent an evening with chicks and pigs and cowsies and friends around a bonfire and then wrote this. i certainly didn't intend it a diatribe against agribusiness or commerical farming, mostly because i haven't fully formed my opinions on those things just yet and remain fearful of entering such debates. but it reads a bit like that, in retrospect.
[Currently pondering: Leo Marx's The Machine in the Garden--a classic.
Part of this (as you'll be able to tell from the writing style) is ripped from a syllabus I'm working on for "America to 1865," the basic college survey course.
"Forty-plus years removed from Leo Marx's original publication of The Machine in the Garden, historians have returned to his literary analysis with full recognition that there is really no “machine” in his book. So much of modern environmental and social history scholarship is about the history of technologies, but looking back at Marx reminds us that intrusions upon the American landscape are just as much about how the American mind perceives them. At the time of its original publication, Americans were confronting mass suburban sprawl and industrial pollution like never before. So he used the history of the American literary imagination in an attempt to explain the pastoral ideal. What had we lost, exactly? Were we mourning an imagined past or a real one?
Students, then, need to understand that the pastoral ideal is something that has been used to justify and define the American experience since the age of discovery. And in the middle of the nineteenth century, as many Americans experienced industrialization and urbanization for the first time, writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Mark Twain tried to make sense of it through pastoral symbology. Hawthorne cringed as the steam locomotive broke through his thoughts in Sleepy Hollow, and then the steamboat's shadow loomed over Huck Finn; the memory and legacy of Jefferson stayed nostalgic, not stale but fresh, as America became a nation of workers and industrialists."
That's what I wrote as a professional statement on teaching this book. I do think it's important for everyone, though, to think about HOW they think. Here in the South, it's much too easy to start a love affair with a completely imagined past--like long afternoons on big white porches and bright mornings out in the countyside, or the slowness of what we think is the "South," something decadent and syrupy and romantic. For most people, that South has never existed. It's pretty easy to understand where we get those images, though. It's all the mythology handed down to us from ancestral stories and cultural representations and even Progressive-Era historians. It's a whisper that just won't die. Kind of like the pastoral ideal more generally. America HAS been a nation of farmers, of makers, but life has never been easy. Or it's only been easy for a few.
So where is the "real" South? Or the "real" America? Has it been hiding, always, out in the country? Where do you find it, and how do you keep it?
I was on a farm last night, right outside of Athens. It's manned by a group of ecology students here at UGA; my friend Levi lives and works there and was gracious enought to have us over for dinner and a beautiful evening by the campfire, under the stars.
This particular venture provides all the food for Farm 255, a restaurant in town dedicated to serving only local and regional ingredients.
It's not really a "boutique" farm like you might be conceptualizing though. It's huge, stretching out along some lusciously dusty roads and pastures. I walked a little ways down to visit a few cows--one of whom, I have to mention, is named Howard Johnson. And he's red-haired and has the sweetest nose you'll ever see on a cow. There's a litter of pigs close to the main house right now, running around. And a coop full of tiny chicks.
You might see a pattern in my lauding here. These animals are HAPPY. They're in their element, seemingly anyway, feeding from fresh grass and sunshine and clean air. They're cared for lovingly by students who want to learn how to farm in an ecologically-friendly and humane way. Yes, these animals will be food. I had some farm fresh chicken last night, actually, and it was so good that my pal Tore was seen escaping into the night with some of the leftovers in a pot. But their journey from farm to table is relatively peaceful.
The point of all of this? Hear me out. I was strolling back to the main house with the whole crew. Night had really set in, and the stars were floating above us, bright little dots--so much brighter than I see them at my house in town. Tore and I were (slightly tipsy, yes) speculating about cosmology and light years and the possibilities for time travel. I stepped in some mud. I looked behind me, and I realized I was walking on the kind of "country road" that James Taylor always sings about. And that. That was when I realized that you MAKE the South you want, or the countryside you want, or the life you want. We were there celebrating the end of a long week as well as celebrating the farm itself and the people who work so hard to maintain it.
The "rural," historians have suggested to us, is never fully separate from the urban. Yet the rural is much more prone to nostalgia than the urban. And I think--and this is just a tiny chunk of a bigger answer I hope to have one day--that's because there IS something magical about it. About being somewhere more green, less hectic, a little dusty. There's something about holding a baby chick and keeping it warm inside your coat. Or sharing a beer with friends under a thick, studded night sky. There are reasons that we crave these things, that we even sometimes imagine them when they are not there at all. We may have let too many machines into our garden, Professor Marx, yes.
That's all I got for now.
[Currently pondering: Leo Marx's The Machine in the Garden--a classic.
Part of this (as you'll be able to tell from the writing style) is ripped from a syllabus I'm working on for "America to 1865," the basic college survey course.
"Forty-plus years removed from Leo Marx's original publication of The Machine in the Garden, historians have returned to his literary analysis with full recognition that there is really no “machine” in his book. So much of modern environmental and social history scholarship is about the history of technologies, but looking back at Marx reminds us that intrusions upon the American landscape are just as much about how the American mind perceives them. At the time of its original publication, Americans were confronting mass suburban sprawl and industrial pollution like never before. So he used the history of the American literary imagination in an attempt to explain the pastoral ideal. What had we lost, exactly? Were we mourning an imagined past or a real one?
Students, then, need to understand that the pastoral ideal is something that has been used to justify and define the American experience since the age of discovery. And in the middle of the nineteenth century, as many Americans experienced industrialization and urbanization for the first time, writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Mark Twain tried to make sense of it through pastoral symbology. Hawthorne cringed as the steam locomotive broke through his thoughts in Sleepy Hollow, and then the steamboat's shadow loomed over Huck Finn; the memory and legacy of Jefferson stayed nostalgic, not stale but fresh, as America became a nation of workers and industrialists."
That's what I wrote as a professional statement on teaching this book. I do think it's important for everyone, though, to think about HOW they think. Here in the South, it's much too easy to start a love affair with a completely imagined past--like long afternoons on big white porches and bright mornings out in the countyside, or the slowness of what we think is the "South," something decadent and syrupy and romantic. For most people, that South has never existed. It's pretty easy to understand where we get those images, though. It's all the mythology handed down to us from ancestral stories and cultural representations and even Progressive-Era historians. It's a whisper that just won't die. Kind of like the pastoral ideal more generally. America HAS been a nation of farmers, of makers, but life has never been easy. Or it's only been easy for a few.
So where is the "real" South? Or the "real" America? Has it been hiding, always, out in the country? Where do you find it, and how do you keep it?
I was on a farm last night, right outside of Athens. It's manned by a group of ecology students here at UGA; my friend Levi lives and works there and was gracious enought to have us over for dinner and a beautiful evening by the campfire, under the stars.
This particular venture provides all the food for Farm 255, a restaurant in town dedicated to serving only local and regional ingredients.
It's not really a "boutique" farm like you might be conceptualizing though. It's huge, stretching out along some lusciously dusty roads and pastures. I walked a little ways down to visit a few cows--one of whom, I have to mention, is named Howard Johnson. And he's red-haired and has the sweetest nose you'll ever see on a cow. There's a litter of pigs close to the main house right now, running around. And a coop full of tiny chicks.
You might see a pattern in my lauding here. These animals are HAPPY. They're in their element, seemingly anyway, feeding from fresh grass and sunshine and clean air. They're cared for lovingly by students who want to learn how to farm in an ecologically-friendly and humane way. Yes, these animals will be food. I had some farm fresh chicken last night, actually, and it was so good that my pal Tore was seen escaping into the night with some of the leftovers in a pot. But their journey from farm to table is relatively peaceful.
The point of all of this? Hear me out. I was strolling back to the main house with the whole crew. Night had really set in, and the stars were floating above us, bright little dots--so much brighter than I see them at my house in town. Tore and I were (slightly tipsy, yes) speculating about cosmology and light years and the possibilities for time travel. I stepped in some mud. I looked behind me, and I realized I was walking on the kind of "country road" that James Taylor always sings about. And that. That was when I realized that you MAKE the South you want, or the countryside you want, or the life you want. We were there celebrating the end of a long week as well as celebrating the farm itself and the people who work so hard to maintain it.
The "rural," historians have suggested to us, is never fully separate from the urban. Yet the rural is much more prone to nostalgia than the urban. And I think--and this is just a tiny chunk of a bigger answer I hope to have one day--that's because there IS something magical about it. About being somewhere more green, less hectic, a little dusty. There's something about holding a baby chick and keeping it warm inside your coat. Or sharing a beer with friends under a thick, studded night sky. There are reasons that we crave these things, that we even sometimes imagine them when they are not there at all. We may have let too many machines into our garden, Professor Marx, yes.
That's all I got for now.
repost number four: little discoveries.
from May 2009:
[I'm here in Shreveport at my dad's house for a spell, taking a break from work (post-comps, pre-diss bliss) and helping him clear some closets and boxes, odds and ends. I've been charged with sorting through roughly 100 years of family memorabilia--everything from photos to newspaper clippings to my grandmother's "novel" (don't ask). Some interesting finds:
--A third-grade project of mine entitled "Women Nurses in the Civil War," for which I even provided illustrations. I guess even then I knew where I was headed.
--Notes that my maternal grandmother Azile and my grandfather James left each other all over their own house when they were angry with one another. My mom always insisted that this happened. Now I have proof. Passive-aggressive fodder from the 1950s. Love it.
--My mom's freshman sociology paper entitled simply "Autobiography," within which she reveals that: she lusted after a photographer on her high school newspaper staff, she joined ROTC to impress another boy, and she felt as though she was afraid of committment because of her parents' marital issues. Gee...I wonder where I get my neuroses?
--Photos of my father as a teeny blond baby, all blurry and faded.
But yesterday's find was most emotional. Now, I've always known that my mom wrote poetry. I have several folders of her poems already, most of them typed because she sent a few out for publication. But what I discovered were new ones, not typed, but hurriedly scrawled on notebook paper, some of them almost unreadable. Coffee rings on some of them, which as my sister Joan well knows, was the "mark" of our household growing up. Coffee stains everywhere. My mother's handwriting was so loopy, so distinctive, that sometimes the sight of it is all it takes to tempt the tears from me. She used to leave notes for me in the mornings before school. I wish I still had those too.
All that said, here are a few gems. Her poems are really raw, really aching. She and I shared a love of the written word; for me, it's manifested in my love of scholarship and essaying and my quests to write about PEOPLE in interesting ways. For her, though, it was all about this raw emotion that spilled out in poetry.
[some (new even to me) poetry from Janis J. Reed]
"Anchor Heart"
And how I often glanced up
And realized the bounty
Riding the scene of it
Bypassing the glory
Remember, my love, before the seeds shelter
Pleasing to your memory
My love is pure of deceit
Gathering in your moroseness
You are ailing rather quickly
"untitled"
I thought I saw you on a dream
A peaked light
deep in my slumber
water rolled
and my solitude glowed
It was not really you, though
but your soul-print was discernible
and your purity rose in your demise
"6/20/99--embers"
If your stayed further away
than just your eyes can know
a Passion--
Glowing and ember like
Would decide your fate
If you died
I could still remember
Blessings, tiny songs sung on the night
as if you were mine again
[I'm here in Shreveport at my dad's house for a spell, taking a break from work (post-comps, pre-diss bliss) and helping him clear some closets and boxes, odds and ends. I've been charged with sorting through roughly 100 years of family memorabilia--everything from photos to newspaper clippings to my grandmother's "novel" (don't ask). Some interesting finds:
--A third-grade project of mine entitled "Women Nurses in the Civil War," for which I even provided illustrations. I guess even then I knew where I was headed.
--Notes that my maternal grandmother Azile and my grandfather James left each other all over their own house when they were angry with one another. My mom always insisted that this happened. Now I have proof. Passive-aggressive fodder from the 1950s. Love it.
--My mom's freshman sociology paper entitled simply "Autobiography," within which she reveals that: she lusted after a photographer on her high school newspaper staff, she joined ROTC to impress another boy, and she felt as though she was afraid of committment because of her parents' marital issues. Gee...I wonder where I get my neuroses?
--Photos of my father as a teeny blond baby, all blurry and faded.
But yesterday's find was most emotional. Now, I've always known that my mom wrote poetry. I have several folders of her poems already, most of them typed because she sent a few out for publication. But what I discovered were new ones, not typed, but hurriedly scrawled on notebook paper, some of them almost unreadable. Coffee rings on some of them, which as my sister Joan well knows, was the "mark" of our household growing up. Coffee stains everywhere. My mother's handwriting was so loopy, so distinctive, that sometimes the sight of it is all it takes to tempt the tears from me. She used to leave notes for me in the mornings before school. I wish I still had those too.
All that said, here are a few gems. Her poems are really raw, really aching. She and I shared a love of the written word; for me, it's manifested in my love of scholarship and essaying and my quests to write about PEOPLE in interesting ways. For her, though, it was all about this raw emotion that spilled out in poetry.
[some (new even to me) poetry from Janis J. Reed]
"Anchor Heart"
And how I often glanced up
And realized the bounty
Riding the scene of it
Bypassing the glory
Remember, my love, before the seeds shelter
Pleasing to your memory
My love is pure of deceit
Gathering in your moroseness
You are ailing rather quickly
"untitled"
I thought I saw you on a dream
A peaked light
deep in my slumber
water rolled
and my solitude glowed
It was not really you, though
but your soul-print was discernible
and your purity rose in your demise
"6/20/99--embers"
If your stayed further away
than just your eyes can know
a Passion--
Glowing and ember like
Would decide your fate
If you died
I could still remember
Blessings, tiny songs sung on the night
as if you were mine again
re-post number three: july 18
I posted this on my mother's birthday this past July.
She would have been 62 years old and counting in 2009, a fact which I fear conceptualizing. I still have this image of her in my head as an incredibly exuberant woman with a heart and a mind that would never grow tired or weary. And so the image never will.
[Ten things I remember about my mother, on her birthday:
1) She left coffee rings on everything. Every surface. Notebook paper, napkins, tabletops, even clothes. One day in high school I ended up in homeroom with a coffee ring imprinted on my backpack. We all gave up on trying to stop it.
2) She appreciated lyrics just like I do. A song meant nothing to her unless she could see it as a piece of poetry as well. We used to talk about our lives in lyrical terms. I miss that, but I have friends who understand this strange part of me and humor me.
3) She believed in synchronicity. While never removing any worth from human agency, from the decisions of the day to day, she knew that people and places and even things come into our lives for very distinct reasons. Little signs, everywhere. The moments which line up in sequence to mean something incredibly special. I look for those moments; they're real.
4) She loved making frozen yogurt pies: graham cracker crust, vanilla frozen yogurt, chocolate chips, and colored sprinkles...set in freezer for an hour, voila. Nothing made her happier on a random Friday night. Well, except maybe a frozen margarita.
5) She wore nothing but linen dresses in the summer. In pastel colors, matched with long ropy necklaces and bauble-y rings.
6) She smelled like gardenias; it was the bath powder she used religiously.
7) She wrote poetry in the margins of novels; I still find surprise verses when I read her books today.
8) Here's how she typically appeared in the evenings after a long day at work: lounged on the blue couch in her den, in a cotton jogging suit and socks, headphones in her ears (they came off a big radio...this was long before IPODness), and a journal on her lap. I actually have a photo of this somewhere.
9) She believed firmly that each of her daughters would eventually end up with the right man to love them forever. She never got to meet them, but Greg and Jason (my brothers in law) have already proven her so correct. Now there's a lot of pressure on me to fill the third slot. I'm not necessarily pursuing this particular venture anytime in the immediate future. But the memory of the kind of love she offered me always gives me strength in these questions. Just recently a lot about love and relationships has started to make more sense than ever before.
10) She looked to Saints for love and comfort and support. It was beautiful, the faith she had. The more I try to dissect it, the less I understand it. So I visualize it as something magical, something that was hers to understand.
She would have been 62 years old and counting in 2009, a fact which I fear conceptualizing. I still have this image of her in my head as an incredibly exuberant woman with a heart and a mind that would never grow tired or weary. And so the image never will.
[Ten things I remember about my mother, on her birthday:
1) She left coffee rings on everything. Every surface. Notebook paper, napkins, tabletops, even clothes. One day in high school I ended up in homeroom with a coffee ring imprinted on my backpack. We all gave up on trying to stop it.
2) She appreciated lyrics just like I do. A song meant nothing to her unless she could see it as a piece of poetry as well. We used to talk about our lives in lyrical terms. I miss that, but I have friends who understand this strange part of me and humor me.
3) She believed in synchronicity. While never removing any worth from human agency, from the decisions of the day to day, she knew that people and places and even things come into our lives for very distinct reasons. Little signs, everywhere. The moments which line up in sequence to mean something incredibly special. I look for those moments; they're real.
4) She loved making frozen yogurt pies: graham cracker crust, vanilla frozen yogurt, chocolate chips, and colored sprinkles...set in freezer for an hour, voila. Nothing made her happier on a random Friday night. Well, except maybe a frozen margarita.
5) She wore nothing but linen dresses in the summer. In pastel colors, matched with long ropy necklaces and bauble-y rings.
6) She smelled like gardenias; it was the bath powder she used religiously.
7) She wrote poetry in the margins of novels; I still find surprise verses when I read her books today.
8) Here's how she typically appeared in the evenings after a long day at work: lounged on the blue couch in her den, in a cotton jogging suit and socks, headphones in her ears (they came off a big radio...this was long before IPODness), and a journal on her lap. I actually have a photo of this somewhere.
9) She believed firmly that each of her daughters would eventually end up with the right man to love them forever. She never got to meet them, but Greg and Jason (my brothers in law) have already proven her so correct. Now there's a lot of pressure on me to fill the third slot. I'm not necessarily pursuing this particular venture anytime in the immediate future. But the memory of the kind of love she offered me always gives me strength in these questions. Just recently a lot about love and relationships has started to make more sense than ever before.
10) She looked to Saints for love and comfort and support. It was beautiful, the faith she had. The more I try to dissect it, the less I understand it. So I visualize it as something magical, something that was hers to understand.
re-post number two: sunscreen, unearthed
I posted this randomly in July 2009:
[I remember this spoken-word piece from high school.
It was originally text from a column in the Chicago Tribune, written by a woman named Mary Schmich. It was then quickly mis-attributed as a top-secret commencement speech delivered by Kurt Vonnegut in 1997. That's not the case. But Baz Luhrman released it in a compilation album; the words on his recording are interspersed with haunting verses from the choral song "Everybody's Free," which many of us also remember from his film version of Romeo and Juliet. All this to say, I remember that as a teenager these words affected me greatly--particularly the line about life changing at 4pm on some idle Tuesday. Because that's what happened to me, years ago.
The shuffle on my IPOD brought me this again today. It's serendipitous. The conversations I've had this summer with close friends, about where my life might go, what's good about it, or what's wrong with it...it's all here.
So I'm sharing it, randomly. Read it, download it (it's on youtube). It'll make your day wistful but better.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of '97
Wear sunscreen
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be It.
The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by
Scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable
Than my own meandering Experience
I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not
Understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded.
But trust me, in 20 years you'll look back at photos of yourself and
Recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before
You and how fabulous you really looked.
You're not as fat as you
Imagine.
Don't worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as
Effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing
Bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that
Never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm
On some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing everyday that scares you
Sing
Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, don't put up with
People who are reckless with yours.
Floss
Don't waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you're ahead, sometimes
You're behind; the race is long, and in the end, it's only with
Yourself.
Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you
Succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch
Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your
Life the most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they
Wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year
Olds I know still don't.
Get plenty of calcium.
Be kind to your knees, you'll miss them when they're gone.
Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't, maybe you'll have children, maybe
You won't, maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky
Chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary
What ever you do, don't
Congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either
Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's.
Enjoy your body,
Use it every way you can don't be afraid of it, or what other people
Think of it, it's the greatest instrument you'll
Own...Dance
Even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.
Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.
Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents, you never know when they'll be gone for
Good.
Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the
People most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you
Should hold on.
Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and
Lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you
Knew when you were young.
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live
In Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.
Travel.
Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will
Philander, you too will get old, and when you do you'll fantasize
That when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were
Noble and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders.
Don't expect anyone else to support you.
Maybe you have a trust fund,
Maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one
Might run out.
Don't mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will
Look 85.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who
Supply it.
Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of
Fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the
Ugly parts and recycling it for more than
It's worth.
But trust me on the sunscreen
[I remember this spoken-word piece from high school.
It was originally text from a column in the Chicago Tribune, written by a woman named Mary Schmich. It was then quickly mis-attributed as a top-secret commencement speech delivered by Kurt Vonnegut in 1997. That's not the case. But Baz Luhrman released it in a compilation album; the words on his recording are interspersed with haunting verses from the choral song "Everybody's Free," which many of us also remember from his film version of Romeo and Juliet. All this to say, I remember that as a teenager these words affected me greatly--particularly the line about life changing at 4pm on some idle Tuesday. Because that's what happened to me, years ago.
The shuffle on my IPOD brought me this again today. It's serendipitous. The conversations I've had this summer with close friends, about where my life might go, what's good about it, or what's wrong with it...it's all here.
So I'm sharing it, randomly. Read it, download it (it's on youtube). It'll make your day wistful but better.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of '97
Wear sunscreen
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be It.
The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by
Scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable
Than my own meandering Experience
I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not
Understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded.
But trust me, in 20 years you'll look back at photos of yourself and
Recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before
You and how fabulous you really looked.
You're not as fat as you
Imagine.
Don't worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as
Effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing
Bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that
Never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm
On some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing everyday that scares you
Sing
Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, don't put up with
People who are reckless with yours.
Floss
Don't waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you're ahead, sometimes
You're behind; the race is long, and in the end, it's only with
Yourself.
Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you
Succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch
Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your
Life the most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they
Wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year
Olds I know still don't.
Get plenty of calcium.
Be kind to your knees, you'll miss them when they're gone.
Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't, maybe you'll have children, maybe
You won't, maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky
Chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary
What ever you do, don't
Congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either
Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's.
Enjoy your body,
Use it every way you can don't be afraid of it, or what other people
Think of it, it's the greatest instrument you'll
Own...Dance
Even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.
Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.
Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents, you never know when they'll be gone for
Good.
Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the
People most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you
Should hold on.
Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and
Lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you
Knew when you were young.
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live
In Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.
Travel.
Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will
Philander, you too will get old, and when you do you'll fantasize
That when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were
Noble and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders.
Don't expect anyone else to support you.
Maybe you have a trust fund,
Maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one
Might run out.
Don't mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will
Look 85.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who
Supply it.
Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of
Fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the
Ugly parts and recycling it for more than
It's worth.
But trust me on the sunscreen
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
first: re-posts
Just today I finally dismantled my original blog. That hurt.
But I started it last year as a rather selfish outlet for creative writing and random thinkpieces, and I remained unhappy with it because it was so damn disorganized. Its haphazard nature reflected how rushed I felt. But since I fancy myself a writer more than perhaps anything else, I felt it was about time to create a more formal and organized forum for my writings.
That being said, I want to re-post a few entries that, in the re-reading process, struck me as....important. I found that I could return to the moments within which I wrote them, could still sense the emotion behind what I had attempted to communicate. Even if I didn't do that so well in a literary sense.
I feel like, these days, my writing improves consistently. I feel like the ways through which I see the world around me improve everyday as well.
The first re-post is a little rendezvous with an REM song--and a moment caught up in a really effing hot (and even more confusing) summer. I posted it in late June 2009. The value here, although overall its language is languid and abstract, is the sense of place I (as well as so many others I've talked to about this) have found in Athens. And despite my general readiness to move on soon, I recognize how rarely a town maintains such a stinging charm and so many layers of nostalgia. And REM sort of proves, here in Athens, anyway, that nostalgia can be a whole lot more modern that some people would believe.
[I'm languishing in my third Athens summer.
I've finally decided that there is something eerily oppressive about Georgia sun; it makes me lazy, and it makes me think way too much.
But I feel better each day when the sun goes down. What could I describe? Here it is, perfectly: If you go to drink beer on the patio of Little Kings Shuffle Club (which is easily the dustiest, best bar in this town) with the afternoon sun still heavy on your back, then you'll melt into your seat. To anyone who would try to claim that there is nothing called the "southern sun": I say, sod off. It's distinct, it's yellow with lots of orange flecks, and it's hot. My friend Kelli and I were comparing sweat rings on our clothes the other day as we tried to hide under a straw umbrella. So why would you be there, then, in the heat, pressing a cold beer against your skin for some kind of relief?
It's for some sort of daily transition. If you listen, there's just enough rustling in the air as the sun sets as if to sound like hesitant chords of music. To see what the sweat has wrought on yourself, on your friends--all the makeup is melted, clothes are rumpled, and no one's hair looks very good. People look most beautiful when they're disheveled. Or, at least I think so.
What's the point of this ramble? I was just trying to figure out why only evenings in Athens really appeal to me anymore.
This past Friday a late afternoon and some Mexican food turned into an impromptu cooler full of cheap beer and stolen nightswimming with four very awesome (I don't throw that word around lightly, mind you) people. Now, I'm not sure if "nightswimming" is a real word everywhere or if it only holds its giddy meaning here in Athens because REM (supposedly) composed their song "Nightswimming" about some late nights at the Deville Apartments pool here in Athens. Who knows.
This song was in my head anyway because I caught it on the radio while driving back to Athens from Shreveport last month. When I heard the opening lines--the photograph on the dashboard taken years ago, streetlights, and such--I inexplicably felt hot tears threatening at the corner of my eyes. They caught me by surprise. It took the better part of the 11-hour drive to figure out why the song caused me such joy that the joy turned to pain rather quickly. I think it's because Athens has already become nostalgic to me. I can already imagine myself ten years from now, looking back on all these days and nights and smiling to myself because I'll know (even if it didn't always feel this way in the moment here) it was a time never to be recaptured. Fleeting, lovely, like snapshots in an album.
These things, they go away. Replaced by ANOTHER everyday. Sorry, Mr. Stipe, I had to rewrite you a bit there.
This song means so much to me it stings.
Nightswimming deserves a quiet night
The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago,
Turned around backwards so the windshield shows
Every streetlight reveals the picture in reverse
Still, it's so much clearer
I forgot my shirt at the water's edge
The moon is low tonight
Nightswimming deserves a quiet night
I'm not sure all these people understand
It's not like years ago,
The fear of getting caught,
Of recklessness and water
They cannot see me naked
These things, they go away,
Replaced by everyday
Nightswimming, remembering that night
September's coming soon
I'm pining for the moon
And what if there were two
Side by side in orbit
Around the fairest sun?
That bright, tight forever drum
Could not describe nightswimming
You, I thought I knew you
You, I cannot judge
You, I thought you knew me,
This one laughing quietly underneath my breath
The photograph reflects,
Every streetlight a reminder
Nightswimming deserves a quiet night, deserves a quiet night
But I started it last year as a rather selfish outlet for creative writing and random thinkpieces, and I remained unhappy with it because it was so damn disorganized. Its haphazard nature reflected how rushed I felt. But since I fancy myself a writer more than perhaps anything else, I felt it was about time to create a more formal and organized forum for my writings.
That being said, I want to re-post a few entries that, in the re-reading process, struck me as....important. I found that I could return to the moments within which I wrote them, could still sense the emotion behind what I had attempted to communicate. Even if I didn't do that so well in a literary sense.
I feel like, these days, my writing improves consistently. I feel like the ways through which I see the world around me improve everyday as well.
The first re-post is a little rendezvous with an REM song--and a moment caught up in a really effing hot (and even more confusing) summer. I posted it in late June 2009. The value here, although overall its language is languid and abstract, is the sense of place I (as well as so many others I've talked to about this) have found in Athens. And despite my general readiness to move on soon, I recognize how rarely a town maintains such a stinging charm and so many layers of nostalgia. And REM sort of proves, here in Athens, anyway, that nostalgia can be a whole lot more modern that some people would believe.
[I'm languishing in my third Athens summer.
I've finally decided that there is something eerily oppressive about Georgia sun; it makes me lazy, and it makes me think way too much.
But I feel better each day when the sun goes down. What could I describe? Here it is, perfectly: If you go to drink beer on the patio of Little Kings Shuffle Club (which is easily the dustiest, best bar in this town) with the afternoon sun still heavy on your back, then you'll melt into your seat. To anyone who would try to claim that there is nothing called the "southern sun": I say, sod off. It's distinct, it's yellow with lots of orange flecks, and it's hot. My friend Kelli and I were comparing sweat rings on our clothes the other day as we tried to hide under a straw umbrella. So why would you be there, then, in the heat, pressing a cold beer against your skin for some kind of relief?
It's for some sort of daily transition. If you listen, there's just enough rustling in the air as the sun sets as if to sound like hesitant chords of music. To see what the sweat has wrought on yourself, on your friends--all the makeup is melted, clothes are rumpled, and no one's hair looks very good. People look most beautiful when they're disheveled. Or, at least I think so.
What's the point of this ramble? I was just trying to figure out why only evenings in Athens really appeal to me anymore.
This past Friday a late afternoon and some Mexican food turned into an impromptu cooler full of cheap beer and stolen nightswimming with four very awesome (I don't throw that word around lightly, mind you) people. Now, I'm not sure if "nightswimming" is a real word everywhere or if it only holds its giddy meaning here in Athens because REM (supposedly) composed their song "Nightswimming" about some late nights at the Deville Apartments pool here in Athens. Who knows.
This song was in my head anyway because I caught it on the radio while driving back to Athens from Shreveport last month. When I heard the opening lines--the photograph on the dashboard taken years ago, streetlights, and such--I inexplicably felt hot tears threatening at the corner of my eyes. They caught me by surprise. It took the better part of the 11-hour drive to figure out why the song caused me such joy that the joy turned to pain rather quickly. I think it's because Athens has already become nostalgic to me. I can already imagine myself ten years from now, looking back on all these days and nights and smiling to myself because I'll know (even if it didn't always feel this way in the moment here) it was a time never to be recaptured. Fleeting, lovely, like snapshots in an album.
These things, they go away. Replaced by ANOTHER everyday. Sorry, Mr. Stipe, I had to rewrite you a bit there.
This song means so much to me it stings.
Nightswimming deserves a quiet night
The photograph on the dashboard, taken years ago,
Turned around backwards so the windshield shows
Every streetlight reveals the picture in reverse
Still, it's so much clearer
I forgot my shirt at the water's edge
The moon is low tonight
Nightswimming deserves a quiet night
I'm not sure all these people understand
It's not like years ago,
The fear of getting caught,
Of recklessness and water
They cannot see me naked
These things, they go away,
Replaced by everyday
Nightswimming, remembering that night
September's coming soon
I'm pining for the moon
And what if there were two
Side by side in orbit
Around the fairest sun?
That bright, tight forever drum
Could not describe nightswimming
You, I thought I knew you
You, I cannot judge
You, I thought you knew me,
This one laughing quietly underneath my breath
The photograph reflects,
Every streetlight a reminder
Nightswimming deserves a quiet night, deserves a quiet night
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