Funny Comic

Posted on 11 December 2008 | Leave a comment

I really don’t have the energy right now to deal with much, so I am simply posting a cartoon that I thought was funny. I found it on a friend’s Facebook page.


Actually, I do have some thoughts:

What does it mean to give grace? I am always trying to answer this question—and I am sure some of you who read this blog are tired of riding the same old horse with me— and I swear that just when I think I have it figured out, I am shown a bit more about what real grace means. I mean, grace is frickin’ hard. It’s hard to let people be who they are when it rubs against who you are. It’s hard to love people when they wear you down. But isn’t that what grace is about. I hear people all the time say that it’s not about being a door mat, but I think it can be for a minute. It can be about bending over backward for people, and not giving them what deserve, but giving them mercy, which is precisely what they don’t deserve. Because I try to live my life this way, I frequently find myself disappointed that other people don’t give each other grace, but everyone doesn’t have the same code of ethics. I dig that. Sometimes though, it is that very acknowledgment of other people’s mind frames that can be maddening that can make me want to give up on grace and just open the gates of judgment. But I don’t want to live that way. I want to give grace. And I usually do. But sometimes it is so hard.

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Posted in Grace, Imported from Blogger, Personal, Queer, Relationships, Religion, School

Gone Windigo

Posted on 9 December 2008 | Leave a comment

This is the beast that has consumed me:

This is also the beast after whom my Girl Scout camp, which I never attended, was named. You wonder why? Have you ever seen a girl-fight?

I finally finished the paper for my Native American literature class. I am afraid that I made assumptions I shouldn’t have made about a culture I barely understand, that I let the critics speak too much, that I didn’t make my own voice heard as well as I should have, that I tried to tackle too much in the paper and I barely got to scratch the surface, that I didn’t synthesize the information as well as I would have liked, and that I realize I could have written a whole paper on Fleur, a whole paper on Nanapush, and a whole paper on Pauline under the overarching narrative of the consumption of Ojibwe culture by the windigo of white culture. My problem, I have finally recognized is that my brain doesn’t deal well with compartmentalization. I can’t focus intently on more than one idea at a time, not within a paper, but within life. What I mean is that I need to only think really hard about one class at a time in order to write a paper. Right now I am split between Native American Lit., Fat Studies, CNF, and cross-genre themes. I have a hard time keeping my Foucauldian analysis of clothing stores separate from my windigo analysis of Tracks separate from my memories of Jaymes separate from my interest in gleaners and freegans. I think when I am writing my dissertation, I will be fine because I will only be teaching and writing and balancing life. I won’t be teaching and writing and taking classes and balancing life. I do suppose, however, that I will have a whole new set of stresses, like trying to find a job. I also won’t have to write about things I don’t care about, which will be nice. Not that I don’t care about what I wrote about this semester; in fact, I care quite a bit about the stuff for this semester. Maybe that it is why it was so challenging to write about. I have only thirty pages of new writing to achieve and 12-20 pages to revise. Sadly, I also have 100 (well, technically 98) student papers to grade and 49 portfolios. I will finish them all by December 19! I will do it if it kills me, which it might.

In more exciting news: my parents 40th anniversary party went off well. They were mostly surprised, although one of my father’s coworkers let the cat out of the bag about half an hour before the party. There were some people there that I hadn’t seen in quite some time, and some others that I had never even met before. The soups were a hit, and the sandwiches were too, once we found the mustard in the church fridge.

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Posted in Imported from Blogger, Literature, Reading, School, Writing

Procrastination

Posted on 4 December 2008 | Leave a comment

This is not my usual procrastination. I am exhausted. I am not putting off writing. I simply have not had the time to write. I should have listened to Debbie. I should have listened to my own nagging doubts. I should have dropped a class in the first few weeks of the semester. There. I said it. Now we all know that all of you were right. I was wrong for maybe the second time in my life. Of course, I jest. I have been wrong before. I don’t think, however, that I have admitted it. I am kind of an ass like that. I know it. Now I am just procrastinating.

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Posted in Imported from Blogger, Literature, Personal, Relationships, School, Writing

Windigo

Posted on 2 December 2008 | Leave a comment

I am writing my paper for Native American literature class on Louise Erdrich’s Tracks. What I am trying to argue is that one of the main characters, Fleur, is a windigo character. I am finding, though, that the more I read about Windigos, the more each character in the text, and even some of the themes of the text, like capitalism, are windigo characters. The most obvious character that wasn’t even on my radar initially is Pauline, who goes insane in religious fervor and strangles someone with her rosary. Basically, I am having a hard time trying to organize my thoughts, so I thought I would maybe break teh paper into four sections: an introduction that includes a definition of and an exploraiton of Windigos and windigo psychosis, a second section that talks about Fleur as a windigo, a third that talks about Pauline as a windigo, and a fourth about White/Western culture and the logging industry as a form of windigo. I assume that in the introduction I will set forth my own sort of theoretical lens as I look through it to see the windigo characters in the text. Possibly this lens will include the cyclic nature of the windigo, the insanity, the anorexia, the intense hunger, the alienation, and the way the windigo consumes those around them. For Fleur and Pauline, there is the idea that possess supernatural powers because of windigo, but Pauline’s is complicated by her Christianity. I suppose Fleur’s is complicated by her relationship with Nanpush, too. Today as I reread the book, I plan to look for ways that both women go windigo, but I also want to look a the consumptive nature of logging as it plays out as the overarching windigo of the story.

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Posted in Native American

These are a Few of My Favorite Things

Posted on 2 December 2008 | Leave a comment

I couldn’t think of what to write today because I have so many other writing projects to work on, so I decided to make a list of my favorite things. Here they are in no particular order:

  • a cup of good coffee with a couple of shots of espresso, some cream, and some honey
  • a nice sweet clove cigarette
  • Guinness, Bells Porter or Avery Porter or Bob Nowatzki’s Porter, Dogfish Head Punkin Spice Ale or any of their other beers, almost any IPA, Arrogant Bastard Ale or any of Stone’s other beers, mostly beer
  • softly falling snow that doesn’t stick
  • Christmas lights on other people’s homes
  • bread, never met one I didn’t like
  • peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches
  • sweet tea, Coca Cola, and all drinks Southern (Hurricanes, Mint Juleps, etc.)
  • ice cream, especially Mint Chocolate Chip, Mandarin Orange Sherbet, and Blue Moon
  • family and friends
  • the Bible
  • writing by Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, Kate Chopin, bell hooks, Louise Erdrich, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Judith Butler, Joy Harjo, Lyn Hejinian, James Wright, Edgar Allen Poe, Stephen Crane, Thomas Hardy, Allen Ginsberg (this list develops still)
  • music by The Doors, Janis Joplin, The Beatles, David Crowder, Matt Redman, Mozart, System of a Down, Ani Difranco, The Indigo Girls, Melissa Etheridge (this list is in progress as well)
  • foods from these cultures: Greek, Italian, Mexican, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and Cajun/Creole
  • sleeping a dreamless sleep, sleeping in, snuggling

I need to actually work on my other writing now. This little trip down my favorite lane has been fun.

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Posted in Imported from Blogger, Personal