Rant, with picture

This is a picture I took last week when I had a moment to myself and I went to Java Brewing on 4th and read some homework articles. It was rainy and cool and there were so many beautiful people everywhere. I had a little Thomas Merton moment as I realized I loved all these people, and saw the beauty oozing from each one of them, to be soaked up by others or by me. It is the very same corner where Merton had his revelation. He was a bit of allright, I think.

IN COMPLETELY UNRELATED NEWS, a rant!:
Right. It's amazing how difficult it is to have time to oneself during the week. I literally feel as if I've got no time at all. Although, I really shouldn't frame things that way, you know. I have loads of free time on Thursdays, I just usually fill it up with appointments or coffees and cetera and cetera. Oh, what a coincidence: TODAY is Thursday.... I love checking in here and just allowing myself time to write. This happy occurrence is, however, overshadowed by my own OCDness which creates all these dramas and traumas where there ought to be only bliss. For example, writing in the blog = Clare happier. However, writing in the blog also = stress about dial-up internet (tying up the line, in other words) & stress about "you ought to be checking items off your to-do list of homework instead of writing. I wish I could get course credit for writing in my blog.... ¡Oi, dios mio! I do believe I just implied I ought to be an English major! My sworn enemy in academic choices!

Perhaps I ought to elaborate. I've got major huge issues with a few things in my professional/academic path: (1) I do not want to be a teacher (both parents = teachers AND I am married to a teacher); (2) I do not want to be an English major because I do not want to be an "English person" as everyone assumes I am. After almost every first paper I turn in for a class, I am asked by my professor, "So you're an English major, right?" NO! I'm not! It's possible to be a good writer and NOT be an English major! ¡Dios! Some people just happen to write well who also happen to be interested in other things, such as foreign languages, such as women's rights, such as sexuality and politics and philosophy. Ahem!

I interject here, by the way, to mention that I do at least find it flattering that professors tend to think highly of my writing; I certainly am proud of whatever skill I have for the written word. Nevertheless--nevertheLESS!--I don't think it's fair to pigeonhole good writers to the realm of English. Seems quite limiting, at least for my interests. I realize as I write this that my husband was an English major and does teach English, that my best friend is an amazing writer and majored in English, and that I am having coffee this morning with a writer whom I very much admire and who teaches writing. I mean not to insult those who feel at home in the English Department and add to its merits by their participation. I merely want to state, out loud, for the record (sorry, My Morning Jacket...hahaheh?), that I want to choose another path than being an "English person." I also want professors to stop framing the question as "You're an English major, right?" And at least say "You write so well. I'm curious to know what your major is." if not say, simply, "Could you tell me what your major is?"

Sorry I have nothing more profound to add at this moment. I've gotta go write an abstract for my anthropology final and get Joe ready for and off to school. Thanks for reading. I anticipate writing about spring break soon. Hopefully this weekend, in between planning for the Silent Auction for Birth in the Bluegrass and writing a research paper on women's birthing choices in the US.

Death of a Frenchwoman

“Death comes in threes.” This is the bit of metaphysical superstitious advice I took from last Sunday’s episode of “Gray’s Anatomy.” I had never watched it before, but I enjoyed it. Sandra Oh is my favourite part of the show—she’s usually my favourite part of any show, a ser honesta. I think she’s amazingly beautiful and intelligent. She steals whatever scene she walks into, in my opinion.

But about the death. La muerte: viene por tres. The verity of this anxiety-producing thought had not congealed into consciousness in my brain until just this evening, when I was writing a sympathy note to my godmother. Her housemate of many years passed away last week. My mom just told me this morning. I realized as I wrote this letter to Hildegard that it’s the third sympathy note in as many weeks that I’ve sent out. First it was the mother of my friend and pen-pal of a decade whom I met in Zimbabwe. She died unexpectedly, leaving him groping for a way to travel to Nigeria while awaiting green card status without permission to travel. Then, a week later, I received an email from the Mrs. of the neurosurgeon I used to work for, telling me that the doctor’s mother had passed away, to whom he was so devoted. Now, I hear from Mom that Denise has indeed crossed over.

It’s an odd thing to think about, for me. I don’t spend much time dwelling on the end of life, except in philosophical, libertarian terms. I think about “The Right to Die” more than any tangible effect dying has on one’s surroundings and surrounders. I spend so much time thinking about what to do NOW, while I’m HERE, and what I can AFFECT or in what I might PARTICIPATE, that it feels unnatural or strange for me to try to understand death in any meaningful or personal way. It’s seems far off: not part of me or my life or my identity. I’m a living person, surrounded by other living persons. I prefer this.

The ratchet thrown in that wheel of living, however, is my mother-in-law. She’s not terribly well, you know. She’s in her 80s, and her health declines yearly. I visit her often, and spend a lot of time talking to her. She’s helped draw my attention in a visceral and emotional way to the end of life, since as much as my husband and I prefer not to think on it, my mother-in-law has many more years behind her than ahead.

Still, this thought does not affect me strongly—at least not in the way I suppose it ought to. I see people grieve and cry and heave and thrash when a loved one dies. And I certainly love E. (not going to put her name on the blog, out of respect for privacy; she’ll just be E.), but I don’t think I’ll do any of those things when E. finally takes her rest. She wants to go; she tells me so—verbatim—every time I see her. She was an active woman for most of her life, and now mostly lives in a 20-foot radius. She hates it, because she sees how limited her body and her brain have made her life, and it frustrates and saddens her. When I see all this, it doesn’t make me feel anything hysterical; I just feel sympathy. I can’t say what I’d do in her place, but I think I feel the same frustration and exhaustion, anyhow.

Which is all part of why I don’t feel like death is something to mourn or dread. E., for instance, has lived a good long life, and now she wants to go, since her level of existence has changed so drastically from that to which she had been accustomed. I understand this; it does not make me sad or lonely. Is this freakish? Ought I to feel the loss more strongly? Perhaps it is because she is not my own mother? I doubt it. I love E. as much as it’s possible to love, and I’ll miss her a lot when she goes. But I don’t dread the thought of her going or being gone. I wonder if this is normal, or if I’m some kind of psychopath....

In other news, I haven’t written in a while. I’ll post more about my trip to Bloomington, etc. v. soon. Must go finish my homemade chai tea and get some kiddies to bed. “Turn of that Friday Night Smackdown! Time for prayers and stories!” (Things we normally say around our household.... Pro-entertainment wrestling with a chaser of prayers and bedtime stories. It all makes sense. ...It’s a good life.) More to come. Tx for reading; vos agradezco.

¡Descanso de primavera! (Spring Break!)

I'm on Spring Break! Yay, oh the infinite happiness. At the moment I'm listening to Iggy Pop's "Family Affair" and drinking a lot of coffee. I'm all alone in my house, it's quite rainy outside, and I'm just sitting at my computer being efficient. I've sent out meeting updates for BirthCare Network and Honors Student Council, I've created abstracts, I've been phoning the BCN president and doing planning for the Silent Auction at Birth in the Bluegrass. Go me! It's nice to feel completely in control of one's schedule, and to have large stretches of time in which to get the ball rolling and really develop trains of thought. Usually I have to switch gears so often that much of my productivity gets lost in the schuffle. It's nice to be in one place for hours and hours, even if I do have to wait for dial-up internet speeds to catch up to me.

Spring Break quite agrees with me. I am sleeping much better, and have decided to be mostly vegan again. I am back to my rule to only eat when hungry, which means I am eating much less often, since I hardly ever feel hunger pangs. When I do eat, I try to be as vegan as possible, although SMALL bits of cheese are acceptable as garnish, and eggs seem to agree with me, so I eat them in moderation. I am trying to stay away from refined sugar as much as possible, although I admit that I am still putting Coffeemate creamer (read: cancer in a bottle) in my coffee. I think I have already lost weight, as my pants seem looser. However, I refuse to weigh myself, as it is unwaveringly depressing to do so.

Also in celebration of the liberation afforded by Spring Break, I have begun doing some pleasure reading for the first time all semester! I have begun reading Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind by George Lakoff, and Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. One non-fiction book, one fiction: gotta keep a balance. I also plan to clean up as much of the basement as I can deal with, and maybe even create a little private space for myself down there! And I am going to Bloomington (Indiana, that is) on Wednesday, which I anticipate with much eagerness, because I will be visiting my beloved kindred spirit friend, Elizabeth. All happiness... I can't wait. I also can't wait to give the highlights of the trip here later in the week.

In other news, I would like to share something. I make a CD for myself every year on my birthday to remind myself of all the songs that were significant to me in that year of my life, so that I can refer to them in the future and reminisce auditorily. My songlist this year is so far comprised así:

Wild Witch Lady by Donovan
Never Been to Spain by Three Dog Night
What's My Age Again? by Blink 182
Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads
Town Called Malice by the Jam
Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush
Hounds of Love by Kate Bush
It's Not the Fall That Hurts by the Caesars
Bilingual Girl by Yerba Buena
Hey Rose by Girlyman
Maori by Girlyman
Treasure Island by Nick Harper
Everlasting Sea by Donavan

--not necessarily in that order, mind you. Anyhoo. That's just a sample of what I've been listening to and importing to my brain and my life.

I've gotta go be happy now. It's SPRING BREAK!
Yay.

I Want to Have Jon Stewart's Babies

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Jon Stewart? Despite his uncomfortable appearance as host of the Oscars last Sunday, I still find him enchanting. I especially like his young, cute Jewishy-ness in the college picture above. *sigh* And not that i'm on Face Book, but if I were, I would join my friend Elizabeth's group there called "I want to have Jon Stewart's babies." Yeeeah.....

In other news, I feel the need to explain the quote under my blog title. Firstly, I just wanted to give nods to Jane Austen. It's like Jamie Foxx said in his Oscars 2005 acceptance speech: (something along the lines of) "I see Oprah, and Halle.... I don't have anything else to say about y'all, just wanted to say your names, I see you sitting out there...." Yeah. So, not that Jamie Foxx is my cultural compass or anything, but I feel about Jane Austen the way he feels about Halle Berry and Oprah Winfrey: I just repsect and admire her so much, I try to give recognition whenever the opportunity presents itself. The quote itself is sort of a supplication to readers of the blog, I suppose. I am a young person, married, in an interesting situation, and so hopefully will be kindly spoken of. I implore the reader with this quote to indulge me as s/he reads.

Enough psycho-literary analysis for the day. Just wanted to report that today is lovely. It's going to rain, I'm wearing my great-grandmother's alligator shoes, I finished my Anthropology paper, I made plans for dinner double-date with Luke and Kelly (which I've been desiring to do for about a year now), I'm listening to Kajagoogoo and Kanye West on my iTunes, and I'm heading a meeting today. Although I'm not particpularly prepared for the meeting, I am excited to be starting an Honors Student Council. I am even more excited by the student interest in the Council. More to come on the progress there....

Must go study for my Spanish Conversation test at 1pm today. Thanks for reading!

Vodka Is My Friend, or Would Be

So I was feeling pretty good today, for a while. I had made some free time (i.e., not specifically scheduled time wherein I might catch up on the hundreds of prjocts of mine suspended in mid-production) during the last few days. I had reconnected with Thomas. I was feeling capable of writing my summary/reaction for Iberian Anthropology despite a paucity of support from the class itself. And I was eager to schedule my classes for fall.

Everything was good; then, this morning, I got to actually schedule my classes for next semester, and suddenly that knot in my stomach rewound around itself once again. And so here I am, feeling very anxious. Two of the classes I need for my major are scheduled at the very same time that I need to be home to meet my children’s bus from school. This is very very unfortunate. More than unfortunate; it is eating me. This is not a sane or helpful way to react, but here I am, stomach knotted and feeling like I ought to take a few shots of vodka (it’s 3:30 in the afternoon).

I hate not having total control over my school schedule; I have run out of most of the wiggle room I did have, since the pool of necessary classes is shrinking as I get closer and closer to a degree. While this means the end is near (yay! I won’t have to miss the buses after I finish college!), it also means making harder choices about balancing school and home until that diploma is in my hands. This has always been a point of great anxiety for me, and it’s only getting sharper (the point, that is).

Hence the stomach knot, which can only be untied by alcohol. (Wow; that DEFINITELY sounds like a problem. I ought not to drink. And don’t—at least not at 3 p.m. on a Monday. Just want to.) I know, of course, that this knot must be undone not by self-medication, but by a solution which includes other people. (Another problem: relying on others. Tres difícil.) I feel guilty for dragging Thomas into what I view as “my problem:” scheduling conflicts between my scholastic goals and my domestic duties. Why do I feel these must be in conflict? Why don’t I feel like they’re two halves of the same coin, or something? But I feel like school is “my problem,” despite the financial and other support Thomas has given me with school. And I feel like home duties are set in stone, never to be re-negotiated, and those duties I have (like the buses) were always mine and will always be mine—but that isn’t true either.

Why do I get so freaked out by this stuff? Why don’t I feel like everything’ll just “be okay”? I used to feel that way about life; now it’s not so easy. Why is that? Why is everything hard? Do I make it so? Why do I, or would I? Grr. I need a drink.

This Is Not Bridget Jones' Diary

Posting two. I hate to think this might be true, but I wonder (me pregunto, como se dice en español) if part of my decision to go ahead and start a blog was inspired by my reading of Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding earlier this semester. (I live in semesters, not seasons or months or weeks.) While the book itself sort of irritated me on an individual, page-by-page basis, I found myself consuming it like a chocolate bar and picking up little linguistic idiosyncrasiess from it into my thoughts. ("V. bad," for instance, instead of "very bad.") Overall, I'm glad I read it, but I'm not sure it was good for me. It is a book about the private ramblings of an unhappy single career woman who seems to find the worst in everything and make mountains out of molehills. Not really me, in other words. To me, she seemed like an ungrateful, whiny, overgrown child. But what do I know?

However, the postmodern, mirror-looking-in-a-mirror moments in the book really tickled my brain. They were all so unintended, too, was the great part. i.e., when Bridget Jones complains in her diary about the enduring popularity of Hugh Grant despite his cheating on Liz Hurley with a prostitute. (He later plays a main character in the book in the movie adaptation.) Preternatural, prophetical self-reference in art. That's pretty funny.

Also, in another such instance, Bridget's excitement about watching the TV version of Pride & Prejudice. Then her subsequent dismay and discomfort at seeing "Darcy" (or rather Colin Firth, the actor who plays him in the BBC miniseries to which Fielding's book refers) dressed in street clothes and an "unconvincing mustache" (loved that) snuggling up to "Elizabeth Bennett" (Jennifer Ehle in real life) in the pages of celebrity magazines as they played out their real-life love affair. While this is sort of "postmodernism as art-killer," it is actually REALLY weird, since Firth ends up playing another main character in the movie version of the book, a character ALSO named Darcy. It was weird. And it tickled.

So, in other news, today is much better. Last week I was seriously on the edge of reason (haha: another B. Jones reference...I am such a loser. gawd.), but I feel a lot better now. This is due in no way to any change in the amount of work I have hanging over me, but simply a reconnecting of sorts with Thomas, after a week of estrangement. We have these days sometimes of being strangers living in the same house. It's stressful, but I wasn't in any kind of a place to interact like a human being. --Makes it difficult to be an adult at such times.

Anyhoo. Signing off now; I didn't really intend to rant about Colin Firth, but you know how he can distract one.... So as a closing note, let me simply give this essential and useful bit of info, and a photo: Jennifer Ehle's last name is pronounced "eeee-lee" so far as I have been able to discern. Here's a photo. See y'all.

Signing On

Wow. Here's my very own first blog. Well. I had a mini-crisis of an identity nature in trying to decide on the name for my blogsite, but decided upon Barefoot and Married, since it reflects both my feeling of stuck-ness in some ways (typical college-age issues: what to do with mí misma?) as well as my status as a married but NOT pregnant, as the saying usually goes. But that's a whole other issue.

This juxtapostion in my life has been throwing me for a loop of late, and it just seemed appropriate to call my blog by this title. "Married," you see, implies a certain status: adulthood, responsibility, staticity of personality and congealedness of goals, etc. However, being "barefoot and pregnant" implies that one has gotten oneself into a predicament; one is taking on these adult identites ("parent") but is unprepared for them (implied by "barefoot"), either monetarily or in terms of emotional/spiritual maturation. Furthermore, I'm only married, not pregnant, which is, I think, a more serious or inexorable state of being. Right?

However, my lack of pregnancy has actually been a bit of a point of sadness for me of late (more on that later), and so to be in that more serious state of "pregnant" from simply "married"--upgraded from orange to red (haha) in the realm of womanhood--I would in many ways actually be happier, although it is a more ponderous way of being. Taking not only your own life into your hands but that of another, smaller, defenseless, new generation of yourself. Yikes. And yet, blissful.

More to come.