I miss the cold. It's been warm and sultry too long, and I won't get a winter this year. It must be perfect in the Carolinas. My dreams lately have been spent in tussles with the weather. I'm rolling in waves and can't touch ground. I'm running a marathon and beating the boys; then the ground is thick-cut grass over a marsh, and my sneakers sink; storms come to take me into the water. Last night I was in my grandfather's house, and he was there. I wanted to live with him, but people were leaving the city. I glimpsed the sky and saw storm clouds urine yellow and black in shapes like pencil drawings of falcons.

I've never dreamt about waves before, so much water in these dreams. Maybe my psyche is soaked because I live in a city with no drainage. The roads are flood plains. I used to go up high in the sky in my sleep and be afraid of falling. Now I'm in tussles. I feel like drawing or going for a walk on the beach without having to turn around and come back.

A Chuppah, Some Coins, a Boy and a Girl

Last night in the blazes just before sundown, Michelle and Joel said "I do." There were tears from him as he made vows to her. She smiled brightly through hers. When pronounced husband and wife they kissed as most do, repeating it sweetly between hugs of beloved friends.

If only I were a romantic I could come up with something about feeling moved by a true feeling of rejoicing in their happiness and love and steadfastness, the kind where there's no reason to hold your breath. Two is better than one, love never ends, the rabbi and priest mentioned these things.

I love you. You are a blessing to me. Mazeltov.

ptsd

There are so many ways to begin this conversation. "People may not want to hear about your problems," a friend said to me during our walk through the Barton Creek greenbelt. I'm a little more free mentioning my disorder now, so I referred to it in passing as we continued our talk about the uplifting nature of life, passing belayers spotting people suspended in air, hiking through white limestone trails alongside the natural spring beds of the Austin landscape. Even this friend who writes 10k emails, who went to Hawaii to drop sorrows into the mouth of the Kilauea Volcano, who has a life coach, warned me about the not-so-uplifting parts of life that make people want to treat you like band geek. And in turn, his warning about others felt like subtle hands pushing my shoulders back or tidying my hair, reminders of social comfort-levels, acute and attune to the fine lines that appear on my face.

I began teaching six years ago at a school right around the corner from my apartment in Lincoln Park. I didn't know what I was doing. I hadn't even taken one education course. Actually, I can't remember why I decided to be a permanent sub in the first place. I was finishing my final semester of grad school and planned on teaching freshman comp at any college that would take me. Maybe I didn't know if I would be able to cut it as a professor. It seemed like an accusation that I was making even to try. But I did try. People called me "Professor Haley," shocking, but a good shock, a nice sound.

After my two-year stint as an NYC Teaching Fellow, I left that job to return to college teaching. But I've been struggling with it. It's what I've wanted to do ever since I walked into that bare classroom on the fourth floor of a downtown Chicago office building. The teenagers and early twenty-somethings looked at me funny for my small stature, long hair, and mid-twenty-something self. "What shall we call you?" "Vanessa," I'd tell them. That detour I took to the NY public schools ended up destabilizing me to a much greater degree than I have been able to understand. I have decided that this will be my last semester as a teacher.

. . . . . .

The first time I realized there was something wrong with me was a few days into the second school year of the Fellows program. The principals were very strict about the dismissal--no children allowed back in the school, period. I always took my orders seriously. We were the ones keeping the school together, each one of us with fingers ready to plug the dyke. Ms. Gordon had the front of the line and I took the back. When we reached the ground floor, three of my boys tore off the line for the restroom. I was right behind them, putting my foot down and demanding that they leave the building (probably pointing my finger at the end of an outstretched arm and literally stamping my foot). They stopped, turned back around, and headed out the door.

That is what happened on the outside. On the inside my body heat shot up so high it felt like that hot adrenalin you might feel if you were in danger. As I walked back around the building to collect my things I was dazed--stunned at their attempt to break the rules in front of me, at the heat in me, and my immobility afterwards. By the time I sat down on the subway tears began to fall. I couldn't stop them.

The scary part was that I knew my response was a far extreme from what the situation called for. I wasn't in control. I could cover it. Not one person would have known anything was wrong, but the inside part was terrifying. People call those types of things panic attacks, but I don't think that's what it was. It was some sort of web that had a source. Something had embedded itself in me right below the surface and was ready for triggers.

My life was one giant trigger at that time--the hour-long subway ride in the morning, for one. Stepping inside the dingy metal casing just about killed me. The doors would open and close again, so many opportunities for freedom that I never took. Immediately, I was on the phone searching for help. I chose a cognitive therapist on the Upper East Side of New York City. She was a PhD, a pretty woman. I could talk easily with her. But our therapy was technical. It involved charts and note taking. It involved retraining my mental talk to give kinder, gentler responses to the situations that triggered the anxiety. I can't say that it helped much, a little, but nothing significant shifted inside me.

The thing that got me through that second year was Ms. Gordon. She controlled those children. I was rarely alone with them. If I would've had to face a second year on my own, I would have crumbled. My second year was different. I'd had a break in time. My capacity for staying the course wouldn't have won. The first piece of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder puzzle is in that first word, "post."

. . . . . .

So, Ms. Gordon got me through that second year. I was able to finish the Fellows program. I was able to maintain my ability to pay rent in New York City. And I was looking forward, with a little trepidation, to returning to my field of work. It's important to have a field; it's how you know more about yourself. Sometimes it's how you know yourself. The magic that happened in those Chicago classrooms told me that I could explain how language works. I could develop someone else's writing. I could challenge someone expressively and emotionally. It's important to draw out the meaning from inside someone. I found that I was good at it. It stimulated me. It pushed me to a place I almost didn't recognize. An academic? I'm so casual and free. But it worked.

I have reached for it again since leaving New York, since leaving public school teaching, to settle back into normalcy. It hasn't worked.

I suppose I haven't been talking much about the specifics of post traumatic stress. I actually avoid them as much as possible. "Anything related to the situation that caused the trauma produces an avoidant response," something like that. For me the avoidance has been strong this year--the journey to the classroom in the morning, walking up to the door, preparing to greet the students--it all makes me miserable. How do you explain the difficulty of something when you go right through the motions like anyone else?

I have also discovered that loud noises are no good: alarm clocks, phone ringers, sudden bursts of noise, they all make me gasp like a teenage girl trying to gain attention. Even though the triggered responses bring waves of fear and crying, they don't happen that often anymore. What fills up the rest of that space is dread of the time when you will face a trigger. You go on with life. No one can tell. You carry out your functions, but underneath it all is dread. You carry it, and I'm tired.

I've been in therapy again, this time with the eighth wonder of the world. She said to me recently, maybe it just ruined teaching for you, referring to my Harlem days. I said, "yes." It's hard for me to say yes, to admit defeat. Walking away feels like defeat, and it feels like I have to let go of some of the magic that is me, that took me twenty-seven years to find, receive, and then have to let back out of my palms again.

I have this thing. I don't know how long it will be with me. I don't dread it so much anymore, because I have been feeling things shift inside me. Leaving teaching behind has also given me great relief within the sadness. I went from five classes to one this semester. I've been better for it. As I reach the end it all comes back up again.

So I went to see the Enron movie last night. There were lots of guys in that movie. It brings to mind hazing, cliques, the social power of a clique, maybe just power. Was I born with the power gene? I want to be in control of my life, in charge of other people even, but I'm not turned on by power, more like efficiency, doing things the right way.

Basically I felt slime all over me for a good while after the movie, because I know people like the traders in the movie, like those guys in charge, their little macho clique that took extreme sports trips to feed man egos or lack thereof. I could recognize so many people represented by those in the movie.

The film actually spoke to that. According to a study conducted during the 60s, half of us are evil, half of us will shock someone to the death as long as a credible authoritive entity tells us to follow its order again and again. We acquiesce to that authority, as long as it's perceived to be in the mainstream. How powerful is the mainstream? My god. I hope some little sociologists will post on this one.

So half of us will give in, and take the chance to sock it to granny in California, cut off her electricity and drive the price up over and over again because we can. We can do it. We can make a lot of money too. But mostly it's just fun, like playing a video game, and we get a power trip.

I feel suspicious of my friends. Which ones fall in the wrong fifty? Which ones will shock me to death? Jeepers.

My mother tells me that when I was a baby I was happiest on her hip. She was my constant companion for two years, me contented to be held, to sleep next to her. I was quiet and good, so good she repeats. I take that to mean I didn't fuss, that more than anything I wanted to be connected this soft mommy body and hear sweet coos.

The tumult of my childhood began at seven. Two parents became three: aged twenty-six, thirty-two, and thirty-three. For my dad it was the end of the American dream; my step-mom was threatened; and mom was wiped out from living past her breaking point for years. I had big, beautiful front teeth like Bugs and fine hair, bright, wispy, and gold. My eyes were large and brown, like they are now. I was awfully freckly, and I was every adult's favorite girl, so good, so quiet.

I've been investigating some since coming back to Texas, not really with intention, just like you would turn over stones after coming back to a field you used to play in long ago.

This third drought (that I mentioned when I last wrote) was triggered by loss. It makes me say in response that I am good. A friend just gave me this exposition a few weeks ago--if you do good and contribute to the world, don't you get good things in return? With a hug on my face I just looked at her and nodded yes, when I knew very well that this is not true; it's not a point system where you work to get to the highest rung of the emotional sublime. But I am good.

I feel the loving eyes of my friends upon me, a little like their own stamina is taking a hit. I've been quieter; I haven't had a clue how to talk to most of them about what's been cutting off my air flow. It's those folds I was mentioning before.

It actually makes me go quite blank here. I'm getting closer, though. Perhaps I'm stunned by the most intimate kind of deceit, promises of a faithful friend left under a little stone in some old field. There were two people who knew, and now I'm the only one.

Ruth Ella Coward Schumacher

It's springtime in Texas, and tomorrow is my grandmother's birthday. Ruth Ella Coward Schumacher passed in August, 1996. She grew up in Illinois, roaming the outdoors, as did my mother, as did I. She had a baby brother, Willis, a mom, and a dad. But her dad, although quite tall and full of health, caught that awaful flu in 1919 and died when Grandmother was just five years old. Her mother had loved him deeply, not in a girlish way, but in a quiet swallow of meaning that spans one's life. She was twenty-five, a widow, with a five- and three-year old to take care of. She went to work for the telephone company as an operator.

Grandmother was green and gold floral, a double stitch, clothes on the line, wisteria, hummingbirds, and dimes in a dish. She taught me how to make things using my mind and my hands--to read a pattern, measure, press and sew; to carve ceramics using sandpaper, tiny tools, and brushes for dusting; to make intricate wreaths; and to roll hair in curlers, with some Rave solution for waves that would roll down your back. Her house smelled like eucalyptus leaves and antique wood. The floors creaked underneath the carpeted hallway where our ancestry hung. I would go there every summer to spend three weeks. We filled our time with projects and the mall, and she would send me home with new outfits and new skills. I felt completely capable in her presence. Her spirit wanted to take on any seeable notion. She house painted, hunched over her garden till sweat dripped; she wanted to do things herself, and I did too. I let her show me how. I listened carefully to her. She was happy. She loved me. She didn't worry. She was proud of me. Grandmother always knew what to do. She wasn't daunted by life.

some love quotes for Valentine's Day

1. "There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness." Friedrich Nietzsche

2. "Love is not about losing freedom; it's about sharing freedom with a partner who's as talented a liberationist as you." some chick named Sarah

3. "I hunger for your sleek laugh and your hands the color of a furious harvest. I want to eat the sunbeams flaring in your beauty." Pablo Neruda

4. "Between whom there is hearty truth there is love." Thoreau

5. "Love is being stupid together." French poet Paul Valery

6. "Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place." Zora Neale Hurston

7. "Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within." James Baldwin

8. "Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real." novelist Iris Murdoch

9. "I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out." Elizabeth Barrett Browning

10. "Love is the most difficult and dangerous form of courage. Courage is the most desperate, admirable, and noble kind of love." poet Delmore Schwartz

11. "You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, but that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anyone, deserve your love and affection." Buddha

12. "Our love is like a well in the wilderness where time watches over the wandering lightning. Our sleep is a secret tunnel that leads to the scent of apples carried on the wind. When I hold you, I hold everything that is--swans, volcanoes, river rocks, maple trees drinking the fragrance of the moon, bread that the fire adores. In your life I see everything that lives." Pablo Neruda

The lovliest blessings, cuddles, and kisses to my dear friends Lisa and Konrad. They're having their first bebe!!

Hip hip hooray to Katie and Davey who have been accepted (I'm pushing it along just a little) to medical and dental school at Creighton U in Omaha, Nebrasky. They have cute brick tudor homes there in the downtown where they would love to live. It's only a 12-hour drive from Houston she tells me. Road-tripper extraordinaire, I will be there.

That's the good news. I'll be back sooner than the time I've been away. Promise.

I'm reading the students' papers. It's finals week. Finals! Their critical anaylsis essays require the use of Smoke Signals, a fantastic little film about Indians, fathers, guilt, secrets, journey, and transformation. Then they had to find a second source on their own.

My little doe-eyed, home-schooled senior chose The Scarlet Letter. Here's some wisdom from Nathaniel Hawthorne:

"Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst my be inferred!"

reframing the debate

Jeff forwarded me an article from The Texas Observer (November 5, 2004) called, "Frame Wars." Here are some excerpts from that article (also linked above), and my thoughts that follow.

...................................

The basic building blocks of political communication are "frames" (as Lakoff calls them) or "context" (to use Luntz's word) . . .

The most important resource that politicians have. . . is the ways in which people understand the world. Their values. Their worldviews. (Lakoff adds to this: their brains.) If you tap into those values, inform them, tweak them, focus and reflect those values back at an electorate—that’s the way to win power . . .

As long as liberals and progressives insist that having the facts on their side is all that matters, they are doomed to impotence. The next move for the left in the frame war is to accept that it’s okay to cherry-pick reality as long as it conforms to a frame that’s morally acceptable. According to Lakoff, we already do it every day . . .

How can progressives respond? They have to figure out what they believe and then put words to it. “When you think you just lack words, what you really lack are ideas,” Lakoff writes in Don’t Think of an Elephant. “Ideas come in the form of frames. When the frames are there, the words come readily.” The frames for progressives to use to counter the “ownership society” will probably reflect how they value fairness, accountability, and opportunity. What words and images they use won’t mention those values explicitly; they’ll evoke them, and make them seem like the only values worth having . . .

..................................

People want to recognize themselves in their leaders, and through frames, leaders can reflect the public's values back at them. What's interesting is that Conservatives have been communicating in frames for decades. The article refers to "The Cold War" and "The War on Terror"--"war" being a word that evokes moral triumph, sacrifice, and honor. It's important to note that people don't want conflicting views reflected. Confusion isn't a good selling point. Apparently that's why "The War on Terror" was so much more effective in garnering support than "terrorism being a nuisance" (Kerry's stated goal for the direction of the war). What does that mean anyway--a nuisance? The article suggests it opens up the debate to all the complexities, but leaves them unexplained. The key lies in keeping frames simple so that fewer people can reject them.

That's probably why "and God bless America" is such a popular closing. Evokes those values, and who can criticize a blessing, really. You can try, but you won't win. That's the point.

I buy Lakoff and Luntz's claim one-hundred percent. I'm one of those people for whom it's perfectly okay to walk into all multiplicities of meaning. It's invigorating because that's where the mental work takes place. But like the rest of the world, I want to find the heart of what matters. If I come out empty-handed, I too feel impotent.

I've also found that when trying to talk about some personal issue, being able to say it in one line is always better than writing a treatise. Folksy can be the wisest way sometimes, but intellectuals miss that.

The most worthwhile bit of Lakoff's advice is this: "[We] have to figure out what we believe and then put words to it. 'When you think you just lack words, what you really lack are ideas.'" Dems are certainly not as at-ease with this because we don't like to define for everyone. We don't like to generalize and stereotype. I just had a little eighteen year old in one of my classes (who claims there is nothing wrong with pornography--can you say left wing?) drop her jaw when I had the class break down the ethnicity of a magazine's readership the other day--as if there's injustice inherent within grouping individuals. We're certainly flawed. We get carried away. But that's off-track.

What are our values? And it's not "tax and spend." What is it that we believe? I heard it when Barak Obama spoke, "We are The United States of America." I hear it in M.L.K's artistry: "We shall overcome . . . Let freedom ring." J.F.K. set us straight too, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." Every one of us fits within these phrases. We can get behind them. We've got to be uniters, not dividers. Conservatives are simply better at this.

Collective responsibility, people, it's my new frame. I want to use the church's goals as my own, because they are my own. The church takes care. The church is concerned about the welfare of those less fortunate. The church teaches us to be better. Those Evangelicals and Mormons don't have a brand on it. I want it too. "Democrats for Jesus." C'mon. (Yes, I like Muslims and Buddhists, and Agnostics, and Kabbalists too, but you're missing the point. That frame isn't ever going to win. It's too wordy. It's actually a perfect retort by Conservatives. See, the Democrats want to be all things to all people and don't even know who they are.)

the election

Hello friends. You know, yesterday didn't go my way after all. It was painful to me on a personal level. I listened to some good music, CDs my brother had made for me, "The John Kerry Mix" and "The John Edwards Mix." He packed about twenty songs on each, some political, "What if We All Stopped Paying Taxes," by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, some emotional, "The Art Teacher," by Rufus Wainwright, the pure beauty of notes fat with longing. So I listened to these on my way to Willie Lee Gay Hall in the south part of town. When you step outside your car there you get a view across a pasture of Reliant Stadium and old AstroWorld rides. That view gives me peace for some reason. I'm in the country, but the city is near. I can breathe full breaths, but the pace is quick just over there.

At certain moments during the listening I teared up. The government, the people, it's all personal for me, as it is for many. It has hit me hard that the majority of folks only want Republicans--the House of Representatives, the Senate, the presidency, and from them comes forth more Rs in judicial seats. The margins aren't slim anymore. Republican agendas can pass without filibusters I heard someone say on CNN yesterday (referring to some specific bill that was blocked last time around). It makes me think of drilling in the arctic, of slowing scientific research, and of political decisions made to garner the economic well being not only of the first family, but of the president's "base," those in the money.

I care about the underdog. I don't believe in looking out for yourself pretty much most of the time, getting ahead, and protecting your own interests. I know a lot of people do. There's merit in self-sufficiency, certainly. But the interests of others shouldn't be neglected while you strive for success. Does that mean we should give to the poor? A complex ethical question, does giving to an individual in need create a dependency that ultimately causes more damage? On a societal level, though, it is a spirit of collective responsibility that we should be breeding rather than one of individual strength. When we are collectively tied and involved, we are well. When we divide with an "I've got to take care of mine" attitude, we are unwell.

To me, the distinction between being a Democrat or a Republican lies here--I am a Democrat because of my compassion for others. And yet, all of these conservative folks see Democrats as the ones who've lost their values, who want to damage the moral conscience of our society. This dichotomy in perception troubles me, especially after seeing a sea of red across a map of The United States painted on Rockefeller Center's ice yesterday.

I went to a Methodist church in Montrose a few weeks back. Those of you who know Houston may chuckle at what I found there, but I didn't have a clue before I went. The congregation was about 90% gay male. I've passed church signs lately that read, "All are welcome." And in my classes we've been talking (at my prompting) about whether or not it's okay to discriminate in certain circumstances, directing it at topical issues of gay marriage and adoptions by gay couples. Religion is a tricky thing. One of my students quoted a bible verse about man being inherently evil. And then Jesus is the ultimate example of peace and love and selflessness. So which is it? Are we evil or are we good?

It's not as simple as all that, but I do think we fall more to one side than the other. Is it wrong to be gay? Is it wrong to be Muslim? If you tell someone they are wrong for being who they are, then you eat away some of your own peace, which is what we are supposed to be striving for. I prefer the Jesus model over the vengeful God. Compassion isn't selective. It just is. My Democratic friends and I know this, but the rest of the country doesn't seem to. Goodwill, acceptance, taking care--these are my Democratic values. There's no danger here. Acceptance may be scary because you have to let go of control. Rigidity becomes fluid. Things happen, but it's okay. Change happens, but it's okay.

Being orange is no longer unexpected . . . It's the time of harvest, you know, rituals, "the transience of life" I read somewhere. The change of seasons makes me feel things continuing on. I miss being in the northeast this time of year, yellow leaves and stocking caps, wind. How come big cities always have more wind?

Ah, the mysteries of life. I do have another human interest story to share. This ones main character is Cliff. He's an eighteen year old kid, skinny with glasses and a grown-out crew cut with an ever-so-slight mullet in the back. Cliff was a varsity basketball manager in high school. He loves the game, but is only five-five. He's prone to negativity--a dozen "I can't do this(es)," a dozen in-class writing sessions where he sits looking around the room as if no one ever said go.

At first I thought I needed to break him. But I don't. He only needs gentle bending. We met the other morning so that I could tutor him on his opinion paper. Cliff's sentences can stretch anywhere from a typical five lines all the way down the page. We worked on this, and also on defining his ideas. He listened to me. I get very little negativty anymore. Quite often I'll ask him and the other students how their other classes are going. When our session was done he and I chatted about this. Cliff is failing remedial math and biology (badly). He told me all he wants is a 2.0, explaining that if he doesn't make it, his academic freedom will be taken away. Advisors will select and limit his classes. In explaining some of his positions on why foreigners should learn English and adapt once they get here, Cliff told me he can't even get hired at a video store. He feels that maybe the reason is that he's not bilingual. Maybe other applicants are, and have one up on him. Cliff feels limited; he feels his freedoms are tenuous.

I wonder. We're working on his sentence mechanics. We're going to get them better for certain by Christmas. It'll give him something to go on. Community College. A good day that one was.

It is the responsibility of writers to listen to gossip and pass it on. It is the way all storytellers learn about life. (Grace Paley)

...................................

If there's anything worth calling theology, it is listening to people's stories, listening to them and cherishing them. (Mary Pellauer)

..................................


I have no stories today. Come again another day. But I do have six invites to gmail. Does anyone want one?

Girls cry; boys bounce their legs up and down in a nervous twitch

When there's something you don't yet understand, but must face a scantron test on it or well-written paper for a grade, it can indeed cause you to cry.

When I think back on my freshman year, the first in the dorm with my pink and blue floral comforter, raffia door bow and dry erase monogrammed message board, I think of the sage advice my mother once gave me. It was midnight. I had a paper due the next morning, early. It was a mess. I had no idea how to fix it, I remember this. She told me to go down the hall (to the community bathroom) and take a hot shower. She said, "I know you think you don't have time, but it'll relax you. You'll feel refreshed, and your head will clear."

I was distraught. I'm sure it was a final or something. I thought, "No time." And then I thought, "Okay. Shower." I just did what my momma told me, and you know what? She was right.

So today I held conferences with the freshmen. Their papers are these "I did this, and then I did this, and then this happened" kind of things. They are worth little in their current state, but worth plenty in the schema of stages of development. However, the freshmen don't know this. The freshmen think, "She doesn't like my paper. I have to rewrite the whole paper. "

So I called them up one-by-one to conference--a friendly chat. C'mon, don't suck your teeth at me. You know Ms. H is friendly if nothing else. Who's afraid of the big bad Ms. H? Jeremy. He twitched the whole time. He considers himself a reporter, a writer, folks. Therefore, he's nervous to confront the fact that he may not be good at his chosen profession. Becky, she's my girl, bubbly, friendly, thoughtful, but not intellectual, just a regular jo, but there, really getting involved. Her paper was a mess. We talked. She seemed like she understood. But she went back to her seat and stewed, and then had to leave to have a meltdown. Next was my little home-schooled high school senior, looking at me doe-eyed. As I explained in depth new approaches and perspectives, her eyes reddened right up.

I asked her what it was, not missing a beat, and told her to just let it out and not worry a bit about me. "You'll feel better, believe me." She held onto it, wiping her eyes. All she would say was, "It's personal," mixed in with, "But I don't understand how to rewrite the paper."

Have any of you noticed a theme that's been popping up in blogging lately? Starts with an "f," ends with a "g" (if you're in Great Britain). It's that devil that never dies. Got a light?

There's something about academia and coffee shops that serve Pinot Noir and Chimay that make you want to toss out your lungs and take a nice, long drag. I've been trying to stave off the pangs with Oprah autoposies. Bet you didn't know she does those now. Organs dark and polka-dotted with tumors do help. But when your senses time travel, it becomes a teary battle.

I was sitting at my favorite spot tonight, at a table in a garden off Westheimer reading the freshmen's papers about drill team, trailers at the lake house, dances with daddy and the like. I pulled up the hair to stretch for a moment and looked across the street to find a convenience store. I stared at it. Bet they have Parlaiment Lights inside. Boxes of blue and white, their little scooped out filters like Louis Slugger bats in your mouth. The clean and crisp styrofoam filter, and smoke that lets you linger on the still night air.

I'm a gonner. Help a sistra out. I'm dreamy and steamy, a plain ol' low-down tar baby over here. Take me to a basement blues club, a trip-hop lounge, or a scottish pub on trivia night. (NO DON'T) Damn my people.

In 2003, the number of first-class letters declined by 3.3 billion. Sadness. But this week I received two letters and three homemade cd's in my mailbox. Can you believe it!

I have the best friends & family in the world. I must. Three cd's!

Favorites:
1. "The Art Teacher" by Rufus
2. "Truth #2" by Patty (acoustic version from KGSR recordings)
3. "Poor Man's House" by Patty (acoustic version from KGSR recordings)
4. Number 13 on the Garden State soundtrack (and number 12).

What can I say, I love the Patty. I'll have to change this list around after I do some more listening.

Make a cd for someone you love today. (it's like a chain-letter; don't break the chain)

Thank you thank you for small things.

"Because double binds are repressed, there is always an element of terror in them: the terror of bringing to the conscious mind the buried duplicity, self-deception, and pretense involved in serving two masters. This terror is the stuff of vulnerability, and since vulnerability is one of the least tolerable of all human feelings, we usually transform it into an emotion that seems to restore the control of which it has robbed us; most often, that emotion is anger."

Shelby Steele, English Prof, writer, race relations wrangler.
from On Being Black and Middle Class

Shelby is in conflict about his identity as a citizen, abiding by and believing in the virtues of the middle class (work ethic, education, property ownership, "getting ahead," accepting resposibility) and being black, whose racial identification, he says, urges blacks in the opposite direction--taking an adversarial stand toward the mainstream with an emphasis on ethnic consciousness over individualism--an implied separtism.

This is Steele's double bind. Isn't the purity of addressing such enormous inner identity conflicts as such relief in itself? I have a double bind. One negates the other. I am in limbo. I'm double bound. People also call this a Catch 22, but I much prefer Steele's nomenclature. Statements bring us closer to who we are.

background: This was written for a newsletter published by the Writing Center at Columbia College when I was working there. Sarah Willis was an undergrad student and tutor at the time. Joanne Siwiec--was a student I tutored.

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Writer’s Diary

Art is about breaking free from some old idea or way of doing things, isn’t it? Isn’t it about pushing your thoughts through some invisible boundary line that says “logical” and moving out toward a place we question? Joanne Siwiec does this when she thumbs through felts and mohairs and synthetics for the right touch; Sarah Willis does the same when she uses a hack saw to shape delicate cubes of alabaster, recreating the sweet illusions of sugar. These expressions release an urgency existing within us, prodding us to create or learn more about the complex layering of sound engineering, television production, or computer animation.

Stories are being told everyday, all around us. We tell them in the way we shape our conversations, a beginning, the punch line (or punch in the face), and the end. And we can hear stories as we let our eyes float on a painting, coming to our own understanding through the reactions we experience.

All of this to say, we are here because we care about ideas and we have something to say to each other. The Writing Center, I have found, is a place to start those conversations. I have tutored here for two semesters now, along with teaching three different courses along the way. But I don’t really like the term, “tutor,” or “consultant” for that matter. For me The Writing Center is an extension of the classroom, cranked up a few degrees because it’s your time to talk about your work and your ideas for an hour. I see it as a debate, or an equal exchange, in the way that two people generate more creative thought than one person on his or her own. Exchange is the important word, and it takes us right back to the beginning of this page, because through exchanges, the sharing of ideas, we enable ourselves to push through those invisible boundaries that keep us right where we are, when we know all along that where we really want to go is to a place of new understanding, again and again and again.

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"The explanation is to be found in a further fact: to be learning something is the greatest of pleasures not only to the philosopher but also to the rest of mankind, however small their capacity for it . . . "

Aristotle from Poetics

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"He knows how to make the invisible visible."

Wynton Marsalais on Louis Armstrong
(2001)

This week's pick:

Who doesn't like black cowboys? Who doesn't like a horse named Fancy? Who doesn't like Superman or the Bloods 'n the Crips? It's all here for your enjoyment.

Hello dear fellows,

I'm just downloading some "Big Poppa" from the iTunes Music Store and enjoying my newly tudor-stained ikea computer desk. You see, I've had this piece of lumber for years, I suppose since Chicago, and have left it bare so that it could soak up just the right combination of dust and smudgey fingerprints. And now it's dark like my favorite chocolate and glistening in its poly-glow.

(I'm clapping my hands together.)

Tonight I'm having my first dinner guests. I've rallied the new Houston folk and even scotch-taped a cuban postcard on my neighbors' door, beckoning them to come 'round for the folly. As a cook, I felt sorrow at Julia Child's passing the past weekend. And I thought of The Julie/Julia Project. A woman my sister-in-law knows fairly well started her own blog awhile back with the intention of cooking her way through Julia Child's "The Art of French Cooking" one recipe a night for the duration of one year. It's quite a fantastic story, for those of you who don't know it. She's just a regular gal like you or me. She started. She cooked, and she wrote in her blog-diary about it each and every day. Turns out the LA Times, The New York Times, and the CBS Evening News liked her style. There's that sort of six-degrees-of-separation kind of talk about book deals and movies. I don't have any of that straight. But the story is real.

So I was wondering what Julie would have to say about Julia's passing. Here it is. Bon appetit.