meirwen_1988

So, Ernst gave me seven words. I've addressed the first. Time to move forward.

"Love"

English, in this regard, is a lazy language. Is love "agape"? "Philia"? "Eros"?

So, briefly, in parts.

"Eros." Not something I'm comfortable talking about, or actually having as part of my life. Not really comfortable having it talked about openly around me (which, given some of my friends, means I'm frequently very uncomfortable). I accept it as a gift that it can be such a delight, but I'm very serious about it, to the point of sacred-ness, and am consistently baffled by those who can separate it into something that seems about as profound as a good meal at a restaurant you're going to visit once in your lifetime, or as meaningful as a baseball game. I'd rather not have it part of my life than as something so trivial.

"Philia" and "Agape"

These, to me, are the ones that matter. Oddly, though, I'm not sure where "romantic" love falls in the three-part spectrum. The short form is I need to have people in my life that I love. But it is even more complex than that. In the film Adaptation, which is, frankly, one of the strangest films I've ever seen, the characters Donald and Charlie (twins, played by Nicholas Cage) are talking:

"Charlie Kaufman: There was this time in high school. I was watching you out the library window. You were talking to Sarah Marsh.
Donald Kaufman: Oh, God. I was so in love with her.
Charlie Kaufman: I know. And you were flirting with her. And she was being really sweet to you.
Donald Kaufman: I remember that.
Charlie Kaufman: Then, when you walked away, she started making fun of you with Kim Canetti. And it was like they were laughing at *me*. You didn't know at all. You seemed so happy.
Donald Kaufman: I knew. I heard them.
Charlie Kaufman: How come you looked so happy?
Donald Kaufman: I loved Sarah, Charles. It was mine, that love. I owned it. Even Sarah didn't have the right to take it away. I can love whoever I want.
Charlie Kaufman: But she thought you were pathetic.
Donald Kaufman: That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you. That's what I decided a long time ago."

Yeah--that's pretty much it. I love some people. I love them in different ways, for different reasons. I love God as I understand that word. I love hope, and possibility, and compassion, and work, and sunlight on water, and dark, hopeless nights. I love breath, and rain, and how leaves dance in the wind. I love good wine and butter melting on my tongue. I love the bite of a clear, cold winter day and how water tastes after I've been working in the sun for hours. And when I say "love" I mean it the same way I loved his smile. If I open myself to the world, and draw in a breath, deep into my lungs, and look, really look at the horizon, or the fur on a kitten, or Ping's muscles as he runs after a toy, I am filled. There is an intensity of feeling, of being. Maybe it's just filled with life. I call it love.

And cookies. I love cookies. But that's different. ;-)

I recently returned from a conference in Philadelphia. Our transportation to the conference, where we stayed, all the monies for room and conference fees, were taken care of by the college. We were on our own for gas, parking, food and incidentals, though we can put in reimbursement requests for most of that.

The conference was an innovations in education themed event, with presentations and roundtables, all about innovation in the community college and its classrooms. Predictably, most of the sessions focused on the use of technology to invigorate learning, power better learning techniques, present information, enhance knowledge, make assessment easier (both at the classroom and institution level). In short, it was full of the tech geeks of education. You had people who rely on their Smartphones, iPads, laptops, and access to the wide wonderful wireless world in order to function.

The conference was held at the Marriot Downtown/Convention Center. Which is a "business" hotel--in short, the majority of patrons are placed there by businesses, where the business pays all fees, etc.--like parking and, wait for it....wireless access. In the entire hotel there were two "hotspots"--one in the Starbucks off the lobby, and one in a little raised area that seated about 50 (the conference attendees were upwards of 1400). There was NO access in any of the conference rooms--which made it difficult for many of the presenters since their presentations were designed around links to the web that they couldn't access. The conference did set up a set of laptops so that conference attendees could check their email. Otherwise, it was $12.98 a day to have internet access in your room. Those were your options.

The irony burns.

Then, our happy little band had other problems. There was a communication failure between the funding and the hotel's computer, that meant some of us couldn't check in (that was settled within a couple of hours, but it was very unwelcome after 7 hours in a car and one of us having not eaten in 14). We also hadn't been warned that this hotel, unlike others where I've attended conferences on the college's dime, required each of us to use one of our own debit ($25 hold, per day--there 5 days, $125 hold) or credit cards (ummmm--don't have one!) to have on file for "incidental expenses." Unlike the VP with her AmEx card, that put a serious dent in some of our abilities to, well, eat. Also, unlike most of the conferences I have attended, parking in the hotel's garage was an additional charge-$38 a day in this case, rather than comped for those with rooms in the hotel. And in the past when using a college vehicle the college's fleet gas cards were provided. When we opened the envelope there were no cards, so again, an unplanned expense. While none of these were unreasonable (we'll get reimbursed for the gas and parking), and spread between four fully employed adults, they were unexpected, and at least one of us did not have the resources to adjust.

As I look back on the experience though, I think it would have been helpful, if annoying, to have a debriefing session back at the college where our "Fearless Leader," okay, not him, but the VP under whose auspices we went, had said, "Now you know how students feel."

Let me see if I can explain what I mean.

Showing up at the desk, having done "everything right," and being told, despite our paperwork showing that we'd done "everything right," being told we can't check in because the money isn't showing up is like the student who does all the work for financial aid and goes to register and is told she can't because her "financial aid hasn't come through yet." There she is, with all her life in her car, her classes planned, and she gets deregistered and put through emotional hell, because some piece of paperwork got lost in some office somewhere between her and the college. It isn't her fault, it isn't the college's fault, but her impulse is to take it out on either the person who organized everything or the person who has just given her the bad news.

Then there is the student who doesn't make a pest of themselves to inquire about every little fee, every little possible difference between this new college and the college she last attended. Is wireless included in my dorm fee, or do I have to pay extra? Can I park on campus, and is there an additional college parking fee? She gets there, thinking everything is covered, because at her last college all those things were rolled into her dorm fee, and at her brother's college they are, too, so that must be true here, too. Right? No. So now she either has to come up with parking money on top of everything else, and she can't get wireless in her room because she didn't pay the fee, and she can't until she gets her refund check from her loan. Or she could park on the street--5 blocks away, and hope her car doesn't get stolen, towed, or broken into. And remember to move it so she doesn't get tickets. Joy. So she pays for parking, and that cuts into her food for the next two weeks, because she doesn't have enough to sign up for the meal plan, and she's left with only $50 for two weeks, and all the food on campus is SO expensive and she can't cook in her room--there isn't even a refrigeratior, unless she rents one of those! And now she's mad that the college didn't make information clearer in the literature, and mad at herself for not asking annoying questions, because she hates the tone people use when they answer her.

So she checks in to the dorm, after parking her car, and the room is wonderful. And she likes her professors, but she still has to finish the online work from her summer class, because that semester is still going on, even though she's at her new college because unlike half the people at her new school, she isn't on break--she still has work. But she doesn't have wireless in her room, so she has to either haul her laptop off campus to somewhere like Barnes and Noble or Starbucks, and spend money she doesn't have to drink something so she can work there and not be thrown out, or she has to use one of the open labs on campus, and hope there is a computer free. And there are governors on how much data she can use for free, and if she uses too much, it shuts her down and she has to pay an additional access fee. Or maybe she can find people who have access in their room, and use theirs, but she's not that desperate yet.

But she's stressed, and annoyed, and feels jerked around. Because communication was bad, things didn't work as promised, or things were not as expected.

I see those students every fall, and every spring. And I saw people just like them at the conference--they were my colleagues. They were the face in my mirror. I hope those professors and deans, the next time they see a student dealing with the same issues, remember how it felt to be in a strange place, feeling helpless and a little bit betrayed by those they trusted and a system that seemed designed to defeat them. It's not about fault, it's not about blame, and it's usually not about "fixing" it. It's about empathy. It's about compassion. It's about looking them in the eye, and saying, "I understand," and having that be true.

Tomorrow is the first day of the new academic year, at least where I teach. Every year I greet it with equal parts of fear, anxiety, and joy.

Beginnings are always scary--beginning a new semester, beginning a new relationship, beginning a new...anything. New, by its very nature, is "different" and we are hard-wired to be suspicious of the new, to be cautious, to assume it is dangerous until proven otherwise. That instinct has done us a lot of good over the ages. It has helped us become, among other things, the dominant lifeform on the planet. (It is also responsible for some not good things--like bigotry, prejudice, xenophobia, stagnation, and nationalism--but that is another issue, for another post.) So, there's that.

There's also that social anxiety that comes when you are going to meet new people. Tomorrow, based on enrollment counts and my scan of my rosters, I will meet 141 new people, each one of whom I, as their teacher, want to respect and who I want to respect me. It would also be nice if they liked me. Previous experience, both as a student and as a teacher for more than 20 years, tells me that won't happen. About 10% will come to like me, and an equal percentage will come to hate my guts. More than half will respect me, but at least 30% won't have more than casual disdain. So, tomorrow, I'm going to meet roughly 50 people who will never find anything I do "acceptable." So, no surprise there about the anxiety.

But they are anxious, too. About 60 of the people I meet tomorrow will be first time college freshmen. Talk about exciting and scary! Many will be living away from home for the first time, and no matter how liberating that can feel, it also feels lonely and unsafe. They will be trying to learn a new system of education, a new campus, a new life. And they will be surrounded by strangers. At least I have my colleagues, and familiar spaces. The new students have none of that.

But the beginning of a school year is also full of promise and possibilities. When we were children it was marked by new clothes, and new pencils, new folders and notebooks, and, if we were lucky, a new lunchbox with our favorite cartoon character/TV show/rock star on it. There was a new room, a new teacher, old friends in new seats, and the possibility of new friends. A new start. Maybe this year I'll be good at dodge ball. Maybe this year I'll like math. Maybe this year...

For me, the most emblematic signal of a new school year came in a yellow and blue box, labeled "Crayola." Nothing smells so much of possibility as a new box of crayons. And as you take one out of the box--the paper crisp and unblemished, the color clear, the end beautifully pointed (but flat on the end!), nothing holds so much possibility. Will you use the crayon to make a venn diagram? To color neatly in the lines? To create a beautiful image to go beside the poem you've selected to share with the class? To create a daringly individual self-portrait for the art show? To write in anger on the wall? To deface the desk?

Nothing so much in any school year is emblematic of choice, of the individual's ability to make something of their environment, to define themselves, as a box of crayons.

For all the new is dangerous, and requires caution, and good judgement, new is also about beginnings, and we can choose how we begin. And we must, for as we begin, so we go on.

I think I'll start with cerulean.

Lately I've been a bit discontented with various items in the kitchen. I have some stunningly good cookware (some of it inherited from my mother--1950's RevereWare still beats most of what is out there today for quality and durability), that I have either purchased, or inherited, or been gifted. But there are a couple of items I really want. Lately I've been talking myself out of them because "you're gonna die 'soon,' and it's not like you've got children to leave anything to, except the adopted ones who already have their own homes, and some of them have even better stuff already than you do, so really, how can you justify it." Of course, by "soon" I'm thinking in terms of 30 years or so, but over time the cooking part will gradually decrease (age and necessity have their inexorable effect). I mean, really, what do I need with an All-Clad turkey roaster. It's not like I have a family that comes home for Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. Or Easter. And I don't mean that in a "whiney-whiney-poor-me" way. It just happens to be my reality. There's the occasional time when nearly everyone comes over, but it isn't "that kind of thing."

But today I was reading the personal blog of one of my favorite authors, who is 66, and she was talking about how this last year she replaced a number of the pieces of cookware she's been using since she got them for wedding presents more than 30 years ago. And what a good thing it was that she had--how they cook better, save her time, and just give her more pleasure cooking than struggling with substandard performance in her cookware.

She's 66. She just bought 6 pieces of All-Clad and two Le Creusset. It is just her, and her husband, and the occasional visits of friends.

This reminds me of when Deborah wrote about learning to play piano.

So, I think, maybe, I'm going to go and buy myself a piece of good cookware. Even if I am going to die in a few decades. (But not a turkey roaster, I think. That'll be a pain to pack and move.)

Reposted without other comment.

After the delightful yesterday of talk and laughter and good food, today is quiet. I am, as usual on Fourth of July weekend, watching Gettysburg. I usually watch part of it on the 2nd, part on the 3rd, and finish on the 4th.* This year, I missed the second (see delightful day above), so I'm getting the a big brain deluge today. I just finished the Battle for Little Round Top and visited John Bell Hood in the field hospital.

I think the reason I watch it every year is that more than any other war film I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot) it makes war itself something heartbreaking. More importantly, Maxwell's Gettysburg re-affirms the basic decency of human beings, even nobility, even while showing that even the best of men can make horrible mistakes with devastating consequences--but that those mistakes do not change the fundamental decency or value of those who make them. It is, ultimately, a movie optimistic about the human spirt and, as Chamberlain would say, the inherent value of every human being, and that I think is why even the heartbreak of Pickett's Charge can't make me turn away from it.

( Added a bit later in the afternoon )

The morning began with hearing the NPR voices I know and love read through the document that begins "We hold these truths to be self-evident..."; now I am watching courage and conviction; I will spend my evening with friends from my youth, singing and laughing.

May your day, your holiday, give you as much satisfaction.

And for those of you going to Glenn Linn, where I spent part of last year's holiday weekend--fence, giggle, and drink some rum or Scotch. He would.

Every once in a while I treat myself to the Sunday New York Times. Now, mind you, this is not an unalloyed pleasure. Reading it reminds me of how far I am from those things I would choose to have in my life if I could--a bakery around the corner, a bus to hop on to get to fun, and bars, without worrying that I won't be ready to leave before the sun sets, or that I can't have that second glass of wine because I have to drive. A place where if I truly want to go and see Hunger I can, rather than waiting for Netflix, since the chance it will ever appear in a theatre here is beyond slim.

But it is still a pleasure to read of a place where there is so much. To read ideas put out on broadsheets of paper.

So, last week I bought myself a copy. It is a sad commentary on the pace of my life that I was only finally able to read it today, but at least now it is read. And there is a comfort in some of the distance from the first section--a context for the angst, if you will.

And the other sections were well worth the time, on this lazy Sunday filled with little beyond Mass, then a donation breakfast (which is why the somewhat heathenish Duchezz accompanied me to our, in her words, absolutely beautiful little church). The afternoon was largely spent with the television showing truly excrebal films, and me reading first the local Sunday paper, and then the aforementioned copy of the Times.

What prompted this post was the special insert last week, Season Premiere: Men's Fashion Spring 2009. This insert was in keeping with what seemed to be a theme for that week's edition, since the second section had had a huge picture of Dwayne Johnson on the first page. This section's cover was a very sharp, very sexy black and white photo of Eric Dane, who I have found easy on the eyes ever since he was on Charmed. So, having nothing better to do, and being a compulsive finisher, I made my way through all 116 pages.

And came away very thoughtful.

Over the years of being first a self-conscious tween, then a teen, then a Cosmopolitan target and on through Self, and now in More, with the occasional glances at Vogue and Vanity Fair, I've become accustomed to a certain...culture...in the advertisements for women's clothing. A certain level of sexual availability, a certain corruption of innocence in a very Lolita-esque way. I've become accustomed to the Balanchine inspired body types, the ennui-infused belligerence that passes for smokey sexuality. And when the feminists, and the social engineers, and the religious conservatives all start going off on the ads and the innuendos therein, the models they role-play for the young, I tend to have an attitude of "get over it."

But there were some fashion shots and layouts in this insert that, frankly, gave me serious...creeps. Perhaps because I am not the target audience and I am viewing them through objective eyes? Or perhaps because as a solidly heterosexual female, males put on display does trigger certain basic responses, and so I can see just what kind of manipulation is going on. Whatever the reason, some of those ads were...disturbing. It wasn't the fact that apparently no male under 40 wearing couture, even in $2000 shoes, has ever considered wearing a sock. It wasn't that there continues to be a lamentable tendency to think that it makes sense to pay $400 for a new pair of jeans that look little better than young Michael's did after his unfortunate encounter with with the truck tailgate.

No, it was three separate spreads. One, entitled "Euro Stars: Old World Style is New Again," purports to be fashion shots touting Hermes, Dries Van Noten, Prada, and some other European designers. Frankly, they look more like shots on the wall of some bordello specializing in young men. Looking at them, all I can see in my head is some fat, balding, closeted man, greasy with sweat in a rumpled Saville row business suit panting over each photograph until he finds the sweet, tortured face (all of the models are heavy lidded and full-lipped, almost like androgene Kate Mosses) of the boy that he will bugger that night. Then there is "Egon Schiele May be the Spring's Most Unexpected Icon," which is a photo spread of model Drew Jenkins in Schiel-inspired shots, with the photo's retouched so they look almost Norman Rockwell-ian, if you can imagine Rockwell's models being chisel-cheeked and provocative, in poses more suited to Hustler than the Saturday Evening Post--the only thing that saved them from total depravity was the fact that he was clothed.

The final entry, "Landed Gent" was, at least, honest, in that it was some modern fashion shots knowingly modeled on the work of George Platt Lynes--an open gay in a time when that wasn't very common--with a reputation even in his lifetime for beautifully photographing beautiful gay boys.

Certainly there are some ads and spreads in this insert that were just gorgeous men wearing gorgeous clothes, gorgeously. But those three pieces, "Euro," "Egon," and "Landed" made me think of a Greece where men and boys spent the quality time together, and women were valued for their biology. Made me think of boys standing on corners tricking, or hanging around in bars in the 80's, painted like the singers in Human League, risking AIDS for enough cash for blow, or film for their school project.

Most of all, though, it made me wonder if next time I hear someone start raging about the effect of fashion advertising on the self-images girls and young women develop, maybe I shouldn't be quite so quick to say "Get over it."

Maybe I just needed to see it all from a different perspective.

I don't have an answer to this question. That said, I think sometimes what matters is coming up with the question.

( Cut for those not interested in questions of spirituality with a Christian spin )