Reason Breeds Insanity

Most people assume that I will return to meat eating at some point in my life. I really don’t think that is the case, but living in the Midwest bears with it an intense carnivorous pressure. I really only like a few different types of meat, and I do miss some good hot-wings, and seafood sushi, but I am pretty sure I can live without it. People always ask why people are vegetarians, and some asshole at every family event inevitably holds a turkey leg or some piece of meat in front of your face to signal to you just how appealing the flesh of another creature is to eat. While I could gnaw the heck out of some pulled pork BBQ, I don’t appreciate the waving of animal carcasses or slabs of meat as a friendly reminder that I am the one vegetarian freak show at the function. This is why I need to live on a coast. Not only would there be excellent coffee shops, but there might be a bit more tolerance for or embracing of my food habits. And why is it that coffee shops always have vegetarian options? Hippies? I love being vegetarian and I hope that I can be vegan again at some point; I may stop buying leather, but I think it is stupid to throw away or give away leather clothes/shoes that one already owns. I think there is no point really in desecrating God’s creatures—whether that means killing them or exploiting them.. We are supposed to be a part of the creation not Lord over all creation.

On another less preachy note, I am still in the process of reading The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing and I think it is an amazing book. I recommend it but with reservation. I am having a difficult time following the structure, but it feels quite a bit like many African-American writers or like Thomas Pynchon in that the story seems to be unfolding around me instead of in front of me. I feel as if Lessing somehow wrapped her mind all the way around me and enveloped me with the story, but I am lost in the middle of it. I am constantly looking around to see what is happening, but I never can catch the big picture because I am continually circling around the main idea grasping for details.

Doris Lessing writes like I live, but I can’t get it. I sort of stand in the middle of my life looking around wondering what the fuck is going on! I am supposed to be going to the library today to get books for my projects, but I decided to stay home, do the dishes and laundry, cut the behind-the-ear hair balls off the dogs, and read. I needed a break. And I am taking one. Lately it seems as if I can’t grasp the big picture of my life. I try to imagine myself in ten or fifteen years. I can’t do it. I can only frantically look around trying to figure out what is going with me in the here and now. I am trying to say something intelligent about God and my relationship with [Them] with my life, but it comes out scrambled. I am trying to do something for myself within academia, but I am so frazzled that nothing comes out right. I seek to do the right, but it comes out backwards.

I am looking forward to advent. I have enough of that old-school liturgical life left in me that I order my life better when I have something like the birth of Christ to look forward to. I am feeling pressure to focus my thoughts on God and to reflect about my life during Advent. One of the biggest things I am reflecting on is my choice to enter academia rather than trying to find somewhere to pastor. I told my friend, Myra, that I liked to think of teaching as secular pastoring. I think that helps me to release myself to teaching without wondering what else I could be doing. I sometimes still feel like I need to be doing something more than I am doing for other people. I feel so self-absorbed right now, and I know it is because I have to be. I have to focus on me, but knowing that and feeling okay about it are two distinctly different things.

So now I look forward to several things at once:
1) two twenty-five page papers, a multi-modal project, and a teaching portfolio
2) The Golden Notebook
3) seeing Amy tonight
4) going to Dayton for T-Day
5) going out with my mom and brother on Friday
6) finishing my first semester on the way to the rest of my life
7) celebrating Advent and looking forward to Christ, looking farther forward to Lent

I look forward and all around me and try to figure out, what the hell is going on here.

I said yesterday that partisan politics aren’t necessarily my thing, but because our political system requires us to choose between a few candidates, my vote is most likely going to be for Clinton or Obama, simply because they seem to line up with more of what I actually believe in. I found this funny cartoon, so I thought I would share it.

For those of you who aren’t literature people this may seem like an odd post, but I am going to post about it anyway. Some friends of mine and I are going to try to get a panel accepted at a conference in San Francisco in March. (1) The panel would be about the depiction/role/harassment/exploitation of fat people in popular culture. (2) I would be going with some of my best friends in the program. (3) I may or may not have enough money to go because of the lovely property tax increase. I think it would be fun. I want to write a paper on the show that is on the Discovery Channel (actually there are several on various channels), but the one that irks me the most is “Inside Brookeville.”

“Inside Brookeville” pisses me off because the hospital is doing a really good thing–trying to help morbidly obese people get healthy–but the media exploits the fat bodies by creating a freak show out of them. What I love about the hospital is that it doesn’t advocate bariatric surgery! Brookeville advocates health, whether or not it comes at a large size. As my professor says: “Fit and fat,” which who I am, and for the most part I am quite happy in my body. Occasionally, I think I’d be quite sexy thinner, but I settle for who I am. I’ve been a fat kid all my life, and I suppose it won’t change anytime soon. I like to eat too much, and since most of my favorite foods are laden with fat, I don’t suppose I’ll get skinny overnight. I digress, back to the freak show.

Last night “Inside Brookeville” focused on three different cases, which they usually do. One case was an African-American man who had fatty tumors growing on his legs. They explored the tumors medically, but they also showed close-ups of them with sores and ooze, and they showed the man walking down the hall with no shoes on (his feet were too swollen) and his leg that was effected the most was bare up to the mid-thigh. The tumor flailed around and seemed to take on a life of its own, all the while the camera focused only on the tumor, not on the man. Basically, the media fetishized the tumor. Is that all fat people are to the world, a collection of tumors and yeast infections? I wondered as I watched why the hospital let them exploit the patients in such a way. For money, no doubt.

On a happier note, my friend Amy is here from California, and we are meeting in Richmond on Wednesday night to celebrate her birthday, which I entirely forgot. I am such a slacker about her birthday and I am not sure why. I just totally spaces it, but she is here, so I will treat her with great admiration while she is here. I know it won’t make up for it, but I can try. I really miss her. When she is around I get to think theologically in a way that I don’t get to much. Aside from Becky and Dave (AND AUGH! HOW COULD I LEAVE OUT SARAH!), I have a hard time knocking around some difficult theological concepts that I wrestle with. I just feel sometimes as an adult many of the same ways I felt as a child—does anyone get what I am saying? If so, please say so. Is there anyone whose faith won’t be shaken by my questions, my assumptions, my heresies? I think if I were Catholic, I would be branded a heretic for sure!

My mom’s cousin, Jane, was here for the weekend and it was wonderful as always to see her. I don’t see her much, but when I do, it makes me long for California in a new way each time. I need to live in a place where people think about things. Perhaps that is why I can’t seem to get away from school. It seems like academia is the only place in Indiana where people wrestle in a real way with tough issues. Basically, I need more PROGRESSIVES in my life. I would say bleeding heart liberals, but the more I know about the liberal/conservative dichotomy, the more I want nothing to do with it. I want to SEE PROGRESS, in my lifetime. I want things to change. The environment, human rights, workers’ rights, immigrants’ rights, stem cell research, and all those other hot button issues. Let’s stop talking about them and do something about them—that would be a novel concept!

We present for the faculty at noon today. I am pretty nervous. I am even more nervous because after I got home with the pamphlets, I noticed a typo, but I don’t have another 25 dollers to get new ones printed. 🙂 I love it!