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Chasing...

Posted in By Jordan 1 comments

These days are tricking me. They fall down on me like heavy boulders, threatening to break my back. But just when I brace myself and duck my head, they make contact and pop like bubbles. Where has the time gone, friends? Throughout my pregnancy and the months following Chase's birth, days seemed suspended and stretched and soft-edged. I floated from one day, one hour, one minute to the next for what seems like an entire year just waiting and watching. I waited for the birth of my boy...dreaming a new world every single day. I wasn't just pregnant, but the whole world was pregnant with the possiblity of this new life. And then he came, and time stopped meaning anything. The universe began floating around a new center of gravity...it pulsed with Chase's moods and needs, and it changed with Chase's growth.

But sometime, in the midst of Summer School and my Gran's illness, time chased me back down, and ever since it's been taking those stretched moments back from me, shortening days and minutes. And the faster I run from it, the more of these precious moments I seem to chase away.

This semester has been Hell. HELL. I have never given more of myself to something that feels so useless. Teaching Basic English, under the standards and circumstances that I am now working with, is the most disillusioning thing I have ever experienced. Amongst a whirlwind of trying to teach these people essential(ish) grammar rules and the process/method of composition, I have come to stop seeing a piece of writing for its potential, instead seeing it as a living thing to be gutted and torn apart, limb by awkward limb. Perhaps that's what has made posting any little bit of my own writing seem almost impossible for the last three months. Perhaps, on the other hand, it is just my literal lack of time that has stopped me. These days I am a mad woman, juggling like I've never juggled before (but when wasn't I??? And who isn't??? It's time to stop making excuses and string up a few lines of words, even if they do appear raggedly stitched together). Aside from teaching two sections of Basic, I'm taking two classes, one of which is Truth, Order, and Beauty, which, for those of you who don't know, is the equivalent of running an English major marathon. Plus, I'm the mommy to the most curious, stealthy, and all-around wonderfully exhausting baby this side of the Mississippi. Oh, and did I mention that I get paid Jack. Diddly. Squat? I've never worked so hard in my life to be so broke and worn out.

But, like I said...these days that seem like rocks practically bounce off me, for the most part. I honestly love my (work) days - not quite as much as I did last semester, but I understand that it's all just a big fat learning process...and Oh, how I've learned.

I've learned what I'm capable of...and, as it turns out, it's pretty astronomical. I've learned how to navigate many truly ridiculous professional situations. I've learned about teaching, and English, and tutoring...And, of course, I've learned about my son - his emerging, brilliant personality. I've learned about how much one person can love another one...so much that it's terrifying.

And now here I am again at a crossroads...wondering where this little engine that could is planning on going...wondering what I want to do with my life...wondering how to get there. I find myself needing to reevaluate and redefine my priorities and my projected path. It is an exciting and somewhat scary task. There aren't many certainties.

But there are a few: 1. I love these shoes I'm walking in. 2. I have been given many most spectacular gifts - the best being, of course, my Chase. I can't believe I get to be HIS mom. 3. I've got lots of love to give away. 4. This blog is in for some major changes 5. Life is good.

Time isn't stopping for me, so it's time for me to hang on and embrace scary and welcome change. Here's to today...

Hi!

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Hello, friends! Long time, no...well, blog. To put it lightly, I've been busy. And while I promise a much longer and more informative blog to come on just what I mean by busy, I just wanted to take a moment to say just how thankful I am for this relaxing Saturday. It's only 10:00, and I've had a fabulous day so far. Chase slept in, so I had time to take a bubble bath (long enough to read some Hamlet and shave my legs!), get ready for the day, watch some Food Network, and do a quick straighten-up of the house before I was greeted by a sweet, giggly boy. And, I got a phone call a few minutes ago that included an invitation to Saturday morning breakfast at my Mom and Dad's house....Life is good. And there will be more blogging on this Saturday. I could not ask for more.

Baby Feet

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My baby boy, Chase, turned six months old this week. I love watching him grow and do new things, and I more than love the increasing level of emotional interaction he can have with me, but the swift passing of his baby-ness has suddenly hit me in the stomach.

I have always been the kind of person who runs through life...I go as fast as I can and hit as many bases as I can as I chase whatever is just beyond the horizon of possibility, but over the past few years I have been trying to train myself to slow down, to stop and enjoy the good parts of time before it passes. Train as I might, I'm just not wired that way. I'm built for challenges. I put one foot on the ground in front of the other and I run toward them and face them head on. Sometimes I don't win, but usually I surprise myself. Even when I'm exhausted and sore and running on blistered feet, I find that, if I keep running hard enough, the blisters will callous over and it won't hurt anymore...my skin thickens as I beat back against the world that challenges me.

The past six months have been full of challenges...graduate school, life-changing decisions, difficult relationships, the death of a loved one...and of course learning how to be a mom to a newborn. They were a beautiful six months, but probably the hardest ones I've ever faced, and I have to admit that I haven't taken much time to stop and allow myself to juice the good feelings. I have at times let stress and fear overshadow my happiness and overwhelming gratitude to the universe for blessing me with this amazing little creature. I have focused on chasing the challenges away, on thickening my skin to protect myself from the threat of pain.

Chase can't walk yet, but he tries. The earth has not yet pushed itself against his sweet, soft, innocent feet. He doens't know about challenges...he doesn't know about pain...he doesn't have anything to be afraid of. And the thing that is so heartbreakingly beautiful about it all is that he doesn't even know to appreciate it...he just wants to go, go, go. I want so badly to speak his language, to beg him to just slow down and enjoy this short time of being a sweet and innocent baby in a mean world...I want those feet to stay soft just as long as they possibly can.

But when I snuggle up to those soft, sweet feet, that innocence that I just can't preserve, I realize that my heart isn't calling out to him...it is screaming at my own mind - slow down, enjoy this short time; the challenges are going to come anyway...there is no need to chase them; You will be strong enough to face them when they come...no need to harden yourself up right now.

So tonight I pause...tonight I revel in joy and gratitude at the gift of this little boy and his power to reach me in unbelievable ways and teach me unlearnable lessons. I love you Chase Jackson Gross.

My Gran

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When I reminded my sister in law which one of my grandmothers it was who had passed away, she said, "Oh, the tiny one? I remember her...she was fancy." If there is one perfect word to encapsulate my memory of Gran, it is definitely fancy. I only got to know her for what seems like a short twenty three years of her very long life, and now that she is gone, I have become painfully aware of all that I did not know about her life before I was born. For the greater part of my memory, Gran has always been a small and delicate looking woman. Especially in the last few years, after pancreatitis and the loss of her true love, Dudley, took their toll on her body, Gran's fragile body seemed almost breakable at times. It didn't hold her back though. She was always going and doing...and she ALWAYS looked fancy. In just about every memory I have and every photo I've seen, that tiny little body of hers was decorated with the latest vibrant and colorful fashions. She was always decked out in some beautiful, sparkly something...Her outspoken beautiful fragility reminded me of a butterfly.

Sometimes when I'm driving, a butterfly will fly close to my car, and I just know that even if I don't hit it directly, the winds I've stirred up will have pulled that beautiful, fragile body in and smashed it up or thrown it down under my tires. But often I'm surprised to look in my rear view mirror and see, a few yards behind, that the little thing has somehow fought the wind and the monstrous gravity caused by my disturbance, and caught smooth air again. That was my gran...she managed to remain delicate in a world that doesn't take care of delicate things. So many times she was up against something much bigger and stronger than her, and she somehow managed to survive with impossible beauty and grace.

Some butterflies spend their entire active lives flying over three thousand miles to find a warm place for the winter. They fly for months, encounter who knows how many predators, and bring unspeakable joy to those who are blessed to witness some part of their journey. After making the impossible trip, they bask in warm sunlight for the rest of their lives. Gran made it through many impossible things, and she got to that warm place when she found Dudley. I am blessed to have seen her beauty and felt her love for a small part of her long and beautiful journey.

On Purpose

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I'm reading a book right now that says the purpose of life is to seek happiness. I find this idea interesting and hopeful. I desperately need life to have a purpose. I need to know that I've come to be who I am and where I am for a reason...that I'm not just going through the motions everyday. The truth is, the motions are hard. Even the best things about life are hard...loving a person, acheiving success, expressing yourself. These things do bring great happiness, but they, like other things, are a tightrope walk of designed intention and tremendous effort. And then there are the hard things...the scary things, the painful things. Why participate in any of it if there isn't some purpose...some magnificent and individual purpose just for me?

So...seeking happiness. It seems simple enough. It could be a purpose, I think. I could work through life one day at a time just for the purpose of putting forth a valiant effort toward finding an ultimate happiness. I guess in a way that's what I'm doing, or maybe what I should be doing. But you know what, at the end of the day, I've read a little too much poetry to believe that's all there is to it.

I think finding happiness is just a piece to a much bigger puzzle. I think that the need to seek just the good in things may be a part of human nature that life is trying to train out of us. We can do our best to try believe that we can have mostly just the good things if we are good enough people, maybe even imagine that we have some control over it all...but eventually the hard things are going to beat their way in, and we are going to have to feel them; we are going to have to learn how to deal with them.

No, the ultimate lesson in life cannot only be about how to find happiness. That's way too easy. I think the thing about life is that we just have to learn how to let it be...how to relinquish the delusion of control and try to be the best people we know how to be through everything...to try to carry around and share as much happiness as we can and to be prepared to let life get in the way of that sometimes...to reconcile ourselves with the fact that even sadness has a purpose. I am thankful to have a little poetry to help me deal with that reality...

The Beatles (Lennon/McCartney)
From the album Let It Be

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
Let it be, let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

And when the broken hearted people
Living in the world agree,
There will be an answer, let it be.
For though they may be parted there is
Still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer, let it be.
Let it be, let it be. Yeah
There will be an answer, let it be.

And when the night is cloudy,
There is still a light that shines on me,
Shine on until tomorrow, let it be.
I wake up to the sound of music
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
Let it be, let it be.
There will be an answer, let it be.
Let it be, let it be,
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be...

A Lesson in Unpacking Boxes

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So..lately, I've been bombarded by death. Sometimes I fool myself into thinking that this whole civilization thing is the reality, but my inner animal comes to the surface way too often for me to be fooled for long, especially when it comes to death. I think, as living and thinking creatures, we spend our lives doing this crazy, instinctual dance with death, even though we know that, as always, we will have to succumb....again and again and again. Not just physically, in the end, but also mentally, with the deaths of our loved ones, the deaths of strangers that we hear about daily, the lost pets on the sides of the roads we drive on, the bugs on the windshield. Death reminds us everyday that it is reality, and yet somehow we manage to compartmentalize that reality, always putting it in a place that we don't believe will effect us, at least here and now. My civilized side does its best to put death in its appropriate box, covered by its appropriate lid, and believe that the lid won't come off until that day, far in the future, when I decide that I'm ready to take the lid off and deal with it. My animal side is still pretty strong though, and it knows that no lid is going to keep death away...it won't even keep the idea of death away. My animal side knows that no one could ever really put death in a box anyway...it's like air. It's always there...it is in the food that I eat, the books that I read, the songs that I sing, the relationships I make...it is, as Walt Whitman said, under my boot soles. I heard a song this weekend that said, among other things, "Life taught me to die." I wonder if anyone ever really learns that lesson...I guess it really doesn't matter if they do. Either way, the only thing I'm learning is that boxes don't work...life happens in circles.

On faith and fate and plans...and powering through

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So...I've been lacking a little motivation/inspiration lately. I am off work and school for the entire month of May, and I thought that meant I'd finally have some time to dedicate to my creativity, but, instead, I've hit a long and powerful lull. But, I've finally summoned the courage to power through...so, here we go.

It is a crazy time in the life of the Gross family. We have lots of things up in air right now, and the future has become suspended in a limbo-zone of hopes, fears, and thousands of possible scenarios that are consuming my mind at all times. I resigned my one great wish of being able to glimpse into the future many years ago...of all the gifts I've been blessed with, psychic power isn't one of them. But I've also resigned myself to another truth: if I could go back to any other point in my life and tell myself just one thing, I wouldn't tell myself all the answers. I would simlply say, "Everything is going to be okay...everything is going to be beyond okay...you are going to be blessed in so many ways beyond any of the possibilties you ever could have imagined."

Things pretty much always turn out exactly how they are supposed to. I know this, and yet it really doesn't soothe any of my anxieties. If only I had a nickel for everytime someone told has told me that "God has a plan for you" or "If you want God to laugh, tell him your plans" or something along these lines...I always nod politely, thankful for the advice, but in my mind I'm thinking..."Yeah...uh huh..but who ever got anywhere without a plan?" I've always taken a "50% work and planning 50% fate" approach to life. In the end, do I really have any control over how my life is going to turn out? Not much, but maybe a little...and I'm going to juice that little bit of power just as much as I can.

I am a major planner. I create timelined plans for accomplishing goals...small term goals that contribute to greater long term goals. Michael and I are in various stages of different sets of plans and goals, both individually and as a team. These plans are our attemts to manage and maximize the little bit of control we do have over our lives. I throw myself into these plans and attempt to micromanage every part of my life...even things like my creativity.

So, while I scheduled May out to be a time for extreme creative output before another three hectic semesters of school, life threw me one of its many curveballs and hit me with a dry spell. During the past few weeks, I have had moments of desperation...wondering if my creativity will wither and fade and die...wondering how I will ever be able to call myself a writer when I can't even manage to squeeze out a weekly blog. In these moments, I summon my future self's advice: "Things will be okay...things will be more than okay...you are going to be blessed in so many ways beyond any of the possibilities you could have ever imagined."

I feel like I am constantly learning one lesson in life over and over again...it is all about balance. I have to learn to feel comfortable balancing that little bit of control I can hold onto and the roller coaster ride of fate. I have to have a little faith that it will all work out, somehow, someway, and usually my wildest dreams will be surpassed. Dry spells end and difficulties are overcome and you can't really plan how or when it will all happen. All you can really do is suck the life out of every single day and make as much of what you want to happen happen...and try as hard as you can to be thankful for every moment you get to experience in this crazy world.

So I am going to seize the opportunity and learn from the difficulty of this limbo world. I am going to focus on having faith that the best thing will ultimately happen and I am going to power through this dry spell and believe that pretty soon, the magic will return to me....perhaps it is busy elsewhere these days, make unseen, unknown changes in my world, sprinkling fairy dust on the seedlings of a future beyond my own imaginings...

On being fine...

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Wwwwhhhhheeeewww....Sorry, but I had to start this post out with a giant sigh of relief. I have been fighting battles for this day for several months now, and it is finally here! I survived this semester of craziness...I had a baby, checked off six more hours of graduate credit, finished my last semester as a full time tutor in the writing center (it's on to teaching next semester...yikes!), and along the way I also juggled the rest of my responsibilities, a little financial stress, and some crazy postpartum hormones. Today is a day of sweet relief. Michael is at a fishing tournament, and I am getting to spend some much needed quality time with my baby boy.

Last night we went out to celebrate, just the three of us...and of course the crazy scary tornado weather had to come and try to blow us away, but we managed to survive and actually have a pretty amazing night together. I think it was an appropriate way to cap off the whole experience of this past semester. When we got home, the three of us huddled up together to watch the weather and Michael said, "We're going to be just fine." It was so simple but also so transcendent.

I think that I have finally reached the realization that Michael and I can weather pretty much any kind of storm together successfully. It is days like today, when I have some time to reflect, that I stand in awe at the tremendous power of our unlikely relationship.

We are two of the most different kind of people you will ever meet. In a nutshell, I would hesitantly label myself an academic. I go to school for the pleasure of learning...I cherish free time spent alone with books and even (gasp) paper writing, although I wouldn't have told you that earlier this week. I am a little neurotic, very sensitive and analytical...a moody introvert.

Michael, on the other hand, is pretty much always happy. He is satisfied by working on little (or big) tasks of any kind. He can find a way to laugh (and make others laugh) at almost anything, and he hasn't read a single book since we started dating seven years ago. He doesn't care about underlying meanings or analyzing feelings...He's more about figuring out the facts and making things happen than sitting around thinking about who/what/when/where/why and how things come to be the way they are.

We met when we were practically babies, and got married, I'd say, right around the toddler stage. Most people thought we were crazy...I'm pretty sure they were right. We didn't have money or a plan or anything going for us except for an intense desire to wake up next to one another every morning and fight through life side-by-side.

In some ways, I think the two of us are kind of like step-siblings on hormonal overdrive or something (only less creepy)...he is more like a brother to me sometimes...protective, bossy, doing his best to annoy me. And I feel like our relationship is the only place I can safely relinquish the bitchy teenage sister inside my soul. We spend much of our time bickering about stupid, little things and even more time wrestling and laughing and making fun of one another.

There have been many times when I have been full of doubt when it comes to the two of us...how can two such different people who have about nine million obstacles ahead of them make it together in a world where most people end up divorced...especially the ones who try to make a marriage work when they are as young as we are? And yet, somehow, against all odds, the two of us prove me wrong through every challenge.

I only have to look at our son to see why. As I have gotten to know his emerging little personality, I have come to the realization that, together, Michael and I make the best kind of person. Chase has inherited such distinct qualities from each of us...he is such a serious joy spreader; he just makes everyone so insanely happy. And for the most part, he is so mellow and calm. He wants to get his hands on things and move around, and he already tries to stand up and even take little steps. Those things come from his daddy. But he also has these moments in which you can tell he is just a little old soul waiting for his baby body to grow into his mind. You can tell that, as soon as he can get his mouth to do it, he is going to start spouting out all the little wonderful, intense thoughts he is already thinking. And he has these wild explosions of emotion...these things come from me. I can already tell that he has the perfect tools to cut out his own unique and amazing path through life. He is going to make it, and he is going to do awesome things because he is just the right combination of a doer and a thinker...just the right combination of a lover and a fighter.

He is the perfect example of why our relationship works so surprisingly well even when there are tornados and hurricanes and earthquakes going on around us all the time. I am certain that as long as the three of us continue to wake up each morning with the desire to fight through one more day together that we will make it through a whole lifetime of challenges like this past semester with more smiles and laughter and love than is really fair for one family to have. We will blaze our own trail through life, one never traveled before, and be thankful for the blessing of every obstacle that we are given the chance to overcome together. We're going to be just fine.

Hozho

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So...sometimes I have this dream. In it, I'm standing in the middle of a dark field and it's raining. The only things around me besides the darkness and the falling water are my arms. In the dream, I have many, many arms. Arms of different lengths and strengths....and in each hand I am holding a bowl of some sort. Some of the bowls are deep and heavy and made of earthen clay, some of them are rusted metal buckets, some of them are pristine dishes that look like they belong in my grandmother's china cabinet. In the dream, I am desperately trying to balance the weight of all the different bowls...trying not to drop one, or lose my balance, or even fall. The rain only complicates matters, changing the weight distribution with every single drop. It also floods the ground under my feet, threatening to loosen my footing and remove my center of gravity. If I spend too much time or energy on one arm, or one bowl, or my feet, the whole system threatens to fall apart. I know if I can't maintain the balance, I will drop all the bowls and be left with nothing, drowinging in the crazy rain ocean of life.

Topic for the day: Balance

If you know me, then you know that I love Indians (American Indians...Native Americans...whatever term you prefer). I love them in a totally romanticized and unrealistic way. I love them in a way that Vine Deloria wouldn't approve of (However, to be fair to myself, I have spent countless hours reading, studying and analyzing the writings of contemporary indigenous people...I have met many Native Americans and learned as much as possible about their ways of life...I have and will continue to try to understand living, breathing native people instead of just imagining them in an idealized way. Nevertheless, I am still a giddy little girl who gets my highs by reading about Indian sprituality, politically incorrect as it may be).

I was introduced to Native American spirituality in an American literature class several years ago, and it changed my life. One of the first topics we discussed in that class was a Navajo concept called hozho (pronounced, I think, like hojo with a soft j). While I could never do justice to the concept of hozho by trying to translate what I understand of it into English, I can tell you that what it has come to mean to me is that life is all about balance. It is the constant attempt to accept things as they are, to walk through this world with a sense of peace and love and harmony with everything in your world, to take what life hands you and find beauty in it, to learn that maintaining a sense of balance isn't really work. It's more like art.

I think that my recurring dream symbolizes my difficulty in marrying certain parts of myself. In some ways, I want to be the typical, type A, All-American girl. I want to be that person who can work hard and get everything done and do it with poise and grace and beauty. That person is a good person...she works hard, and she knows how to keep her head floating above water when things get crazy. She knows how to kick her legs and balance her arms just right and ensure that she will stay alive and that the world will stay rightside up. But there is another part of me that is learning how to appreciate the art of things. This girl is learning that she doesn't really have to work so hard to keep her head above water, that it will happen on its own. She is learning that life is more about letting go and feeling the amazing joy of just being in the water. She is learning that, not only is it okay when the world doesn't stay right side up, it is actually kind of fun.

I probably couldn't make anything happen in my world without both of those girls. I need the overly organized, driven list-maker to keep me on track. I also need the floater, the artist to help me keep things in perspective and realize how beautful this whole life thing really is. The two of these girls together can make something happen...I believe it. It's all about the balance though. It's all about hozho.

A blog composed a few thousand miles away from Tintern Abbey

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Yesterday, I had a tutoring session with a girl who was working on a paper about Wordsworth and Shelley, and just reading it made me want to revisit this poem. I read it to Chase this morning, over coffee and a bottle of formula. My heart just can't let go of these few lines:

"These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:-feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime, that blessed mood,
In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:-that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,-
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things."

Okay, okay..so maybe that was a little more than a few lines, but I won't apologize.

This time of year especially I feel the tug of my earthen roots. This spring, and every spring, is made fresh and alive and full of hope by my past experiences of the season. One breathfull of the wet green April air transports me. I am here, on my backporch, listening to my baby giggle. I am fifteen again and falling in love in a hammock under a blooming dogwood, and George Straight is serenading us through the rolled down windows of an old S10. I am eight and barefoot in a ditch, trying to catch a tadpole the size of a golfball with a paint bucket and my best friend. I am twenty, sitting around a campfire in the depths of Canyon De Chelley, singing Bob Dylan songs with teachers and friends and a Navajo family.

I associate these moments with that other "gift of aspect more sublime, that blessed mood." It is in these moments that the world we've created comes unhinged and dissipates under the pure power of the earth...when nothing else matters but the air I'm breathing and the blood pumping through my veins...when I realize that I am nothing but a part of it all..when I realize that I am everything.

My confusing attempt at Postmodernism

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Disclaimer: This blog is absolutely ridiculous. It is an attempt to just let my mind wander and try to make something out of a subject which I find nearly impenatrable. I am pretty sure that I'm way off track. The point is that now I have thought about it all long and hard, and I do believe that maybe my brain is a little bigger.

Topic of the evening: Post-Modernism (maybe?)

Here goes -

There is this woman who I have invented. She is just the right combination of a woman and a girl. She always has something witty and appropriate to say. She is pretty in a such a way that shows she doesn't care too much. She is wild and independent, but willing to surrender. She is a good mother...it comes naturally to her, but you can tell how hard she tries. She is a good friend...she knows how to make you feel good about yourself, in a real way, because she notices your subtleties. She is interested in just the right variety of cool things...nothing too superficial. She is a lover in a ridiculous sort of way. She has something important to say. She is pretty responsible. You might see her and think that she's got it all together.

You might see her on my facebook page, or in my stories, or walking around inside my mind (if you could see things like that). She is, I think (if I'm getting this Baudrillard guy right at all) a "hyperreal" version of myself. She is the me I put out there, the person I want you to see. But there is a problem. You see, the hyperreal is not the real at all. The hyperreal kills the real. It represents something that was never there (I think I'm going off track here. Sorry, Mr. Baudrillard, if this is not what you meant at all. This is where the non-real, hyper-something, whoever I am floated when I read your essay). In trying to be, I no longer am. I become a hollowed-out shell/mask of nonexistent, unattainable nothingness. This is the problem with the world today. We become the sum of our status updates and "about me" paragraphs. We end up as nothing more than the face we put on. Real life doesn't work this way. Reality is more of a string of actions and choices and thoughts than a state of being. Reality is a shifting something that could never be encapsulated in a thousand volumes of words.

The person that I described to you earlier is not real. She is a figment of my imagination. She is wishful thinking. This is what is real: a girl who drank too much coffee and can't sleep is staying up too late to type a blog that could very possibly make no sense whatsoever. She is almost too full of self-doubt to post it. She didn't finish her homework, and her house, car, and life are in various states of disarray (in a good way). She wants so bad to be good at life...to be smart...to be valid. She is real...or, at least, she was real for a moment. But I think in describing her, I may have just made her hyperreal.
And on that note of ridiculousness, I think it is important that I go to bed...

"time keeps slipping on, slipping on away"

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I can't believe I am finding time to do this again today. After staying up way too late last night goofing around on the internet reading other blogs and such, I overslept this morning. So, instead of sitting down to a nice chunk of time with my blog today, this post will most likely be composed in chunks throughout the day, whenever I get a spare minute. I'll try to be cohesive.

I feel like this is my constant struggle these days. Now that I have the baby, graduate school, work in the writing center, and a host of familial responsibilities, I find that I am literally flying from one task to another. I stay up late and wake up early, feeling as though my feet are already on the ground and I'm already running. I give myself that "little engine that could" speech when I feel my feet start to drag. I blog for clarity, and I write seriously whenever I can. I find myself sitting in bed at the end of the day feeling mentally, creatively, physically and emotionally exhausted, asking myself where the day went. The days of 2010 continue to slip through my fingers so quickly that it feels as though they were never in my hands at all. This brings me to the topic of the day.

Topic of the Day: Time

Sometimes I let the stress get to me. I waste what precious time I do have wishing for more. I get to feeling resentful of the paper deadlines that constantly taunt me and the tedium of my job and never-ending to-do list that makes up my life, and I just wish I could stay home with my baby boy all day long and write when he sleeps and have no other responsibilities.

This morning I remembered something my dad said to me during my senior year as an undergrad. I was (I only thought) totally bogged down with stress. I had multiple projects and papers due, and I was in full on perfectionist mode. I had launched into a tirade about how ridiculous it was for me to have gotten myself into this mess…why would I take eighteen hours of upper level English classes at once…who did I think I was…You all know the drill.

And my wise Daddy, instead of giving me a big long pep-talk about how awesome I was, instead of reminding me that he believed I could do anything, he gave me one simple, brilliant sentence:

“Try to remember that you actually love to do this.”

And I do. I absolutely love this crazy, stressful, student/mommy/worker/wife/writer thing I’ve got going on.

When I graduated from UCA last December, I expected to feel relief at the absence of pressure. Instead, I would wake up in the middle of the night looking for projects. I needed something to do and, more importantly, something to learn. I desperately needed papers to write and textbooks to read. That’s why I came back to school. During the interim, I spent seven dreadful months working as a waitress at a truck-stop, and as stimulating (and surprisingly lucrative) as that was, I didn’t love it. I learned that it majorly sucks to get up every day and go to a job that you hate, even if you do make a lot of money and have a lot of free time on your hands. The days slip through your fingers just as quickly, only there is no satisfaction at the end of the day. I need to wake up running. I need to shuffle from one loving task to another. I need the deadlines, the pressure, the stress. Even when it seems to be too much, I remember that I love each and every moment of my crazy, busy days.

I will power through this last month of the semester. The papers will get done, the presentations will get given, the bills will get paid. And amidst the chaos, I will grab every moment of solace I can. I will enjoy the kisses from my husband, the laughs with my writing center friends over coffee breaks, the late night blog readings, the crammed in morning writing sessions, the few minutes spent “talking” to my smiling two month old son before he drifts off to sleep, the quiet Sunday afternoons talking to my Mom on her porch swing. I will continue to wake up running everyday through this life I love, alternating between these easy moments and the challenges of my responsibilities because I know that time isn’t going to stop for me. Because I have got to suck down all the juice I can while life is ripe. Beacause this is what I love to do. Because (at the risk of sounding like a cheesy, musical-lover) there is “no day but today.”

Music

Posted in By Jordan 1 comments

I'm back already! Another quick job of getting ready for the day has afforded me another glorious half hour of writing time...maybe I can make this a routine? I've been a little off my writing game the last 24 hours, so forgive me if this all sounds a little garbbled...maybe I can blog my way back to clarity.

This morning, I have been listening to some great music. It is a mixed CD a friend made me years ago....mostly Jason Mraz and Damien Rice. I have a few CDs like this one, that have traveled with me through the years. They are mostly all mixes, and each time I revisit one, I am amazed at its ability to transport me. I move backward through time...back to the last time I listened to it, to the feeling of whatever was going on in my life then. I move forward...into my dreams for the future. I move out of and above my own mind...I try to imagine the worlds, the stories, the feelings that created the songs.

I am amazed by music. I am amazed by the way instruments can explain feelings in a way that words cannot. I am in awe of its power to create and transcend the reality that our world has created with our words. Music reconnects us to some animal part of ourselves...some part that doesn't think, but just feels. And each instrument is a different stream of conciousness...and different instuments can be layered together to create a complex world so far beyond words that it seems futile to try to explain it...all you can do is just feel it. I am amazed by the people who can create this art. And then, there are people who can capture and create feelings with music and create truth and poetry in the words that they add to it.

I could never create anything without the inspiration I get from music. I don't even think I could exist....this world would have beaten me down long ago without it. So, today, I would like to thank music for moving my soul. I would like to thank the musicians that can do it. James Taylor, Jackson Browne, James Morrison, Jason Mraz, Billy Joel, Elton John, Damien Rice, Citizen Cope, Cat Stevens, Michael Scott, Bobby Hough, My Mom...thank you for creating thoughts that don't need words. Thank you for putting together words that make me think and hope and believe for just one second that there might be someone out there feeling what I feel.

Virginia Woolf...I love you, but I hope I can prove you wrong.

Posted in By Jordan 1 comments

Good morning blogospere! Oh, how I've missed you. I'm beginning to think that this blog may turn into a monday only thing for the next few weeks, until the end of the semester. You see, I really don't have time for it at all. But after a week, I just can't help myself. I just feel the need to start my week off this way. So, after flying through my "get ready" routine, I have somehow afforded myself a half hour of writing time before I absolutely have to leave for work, a blissful thirty minutes of nothing but me and a blinking cursor. Okay, so maybe my hair won't be straight when I get to work, but at least my head will.

Topic of the Day: Big Dreams

Let me start this off with a little story: When I was about eight, at the request of my teacher, I stood up in front of my peers and announced my career goals. Even then they were a little flighty. After listening to other students say they wanted to be teachers, lawyers, and architects, my turn came. I stood up, even then afraid to speak in front of others, and said that I would like to be a poet...that I wanted to live in a cute little cottage in Europe somewhere and write all day long. I don't know what I expected their reaction to be, but the disbelief my fellow students and teacher had in my big dreams sort of led me to stiffle them, I think. After that day, I decided I needed to do strive for something a little more sensible, and if one day the universe unfolded in a way that made writing an option to me, I would make my dream a reality.

My life has gone a little off track since I made that decision, and I believe it is because I've been trying really hard to be logical, when the fact is that I am not. I am, and will always be, that dreamy little girl...processing reality through a cloudy but clear lens of poetry. Okay, maybe I'm not really a poet (in fact, in my intro to creative writing class, I actually had to borrow some poetry from a friend to turn in at one point...I am not usually a cheater, but I just couldn't turn in the nonsensical mess of words that I finally put together after hours of effort), but I like to think that there is poetry in my prose....that the metaphors and ambiguities I see in the world are somehow heightened in my mind through my attempt at artistry.

Since my son was born, these dreams that have always seethed beneath the surface of who I thought I should be trying to be have reawakened in my soul. I have big dreams for him, and what kind of a hypocrit can convince their child to aim big if they aren't doing it? Not me. But it is still hard. I wonder, sometimes, if it really is possible to write, and really write, if you don't have those luxuries Virginia Woolf believes are neccessary: money and a room of your own. I don't really have these things, and I might never have them. I must accept the realization that, in order to help provide a good life for my family, I will have to have a real job one of these days. And the room that was supposed to be my writing room when we bought this house has since become a nursery. But these actual phsycial obsticles are really symbols for the bigger obsticles that exist in my mind. How can I find in my own mind the freedom to try to chase my big dreams of becoming a real writer one day? How can I possibly ever learn to juggle all the other responsibilities in my life with the burning desire to rush to a computer four or five times a day to get a story into words?

I have to accept the fact that the universe may never unfold as I want it to. If I want to do this, I'm going to have to find a way. My sister and brother in law have a pretty good theory: Find what you love to do and then figure out a way to make money at it. Maybe one day I can turn this into a career. Maybe one day I will have the money and a room of my own to be the writer that exists in my dreams. Until that day, I guess I will have to settle with thirty good minutes of writing on a monday morning, and every other free moment a can grab in between now and next monday.

Ahh..there is so much more to say, but my minutes are up..the real world is calling me out of the dreamy mist. Until next time, I hope you can find a way to do it all. I know I am!

happiness...or something

Posted in By Jordan 3 comments

After much debate, I've decided that Freud was a dick part two will have to wait...I want to write happy tonight. But don't you worry...it's coming! I'm not done with him yet.

It is 7:30pm on a monday, and I am not doing anything I am supposed to be doing. There is a stack of reading that has yet to be done, a paper outline that has yet to be written, a presentation that remains unfinished, and an ever-beckoning pile of laundry on the floor....but don't despair (because I'm not). That's right...instead of tending to my business, I'm blogging. I'm blogging because it makes me happy, but that doesn't mean the rest of my growing to-do list doesn't.

Topic of the day: Being Happy

I have a confession to make. I am totally, ridiculously, undeniably happy. Not just in this moment, but in my life. Last night, as I lay in my bed exhausted from the long holiday weekend, I couldn't sleep. But it wasn't because I was dreading the return of the work week...oh, no. It was because I was giddy with excitement at the morning to come. I remember feeling that way many a time as a child....the night before a vacation, or Christmas Eve, or before my birthday. Usually any special occaision kept me from slumber. However, today wasn't special..and neither is this week. They are just the days of my life, and right now, I can't wait to wake up to them, to live them. But these days are filled with challenges and chores, just like yours. In fact, this is one of the most stressful months of my life. I am learning how to be a mother...a working mother...a working mother who is in school...a working mother who is in school and has several HUGE projects due in the next few weeks. And yet, no matter how much I try to, I cannot logic myself into the anxiety attack I should be having.

But I'm not always this way. In fact, though most people would tell you that I have a cookie-cutter perfect life, I am the type of girl who always finds a way to ruin it. I'm always so sure that, even in the most perfect of times, there is a disaster looming around the corner. Furthermore, I put an insurmountable amount of pressure on myself. In fact, I am rarely very happy at all.

So, what's the deal? Is it my new baby, you may ask? Well, probably partly (I'd be lying if I tried to deny that). But it's something else, too. In fact, the more I live, the more I'd be willing to say that most of any person's happiness depended on that something else. That something is my attitude. (I know, so cheesy, right? But, I don't care. Happy is happy, and there's no sense in trying to be cool about it). Earlier I had this moment. In this moment, I could have been bombarded with stress and irritation. I was folding a load of laundry, listening to my baby cry, trying to figure out if the pork chops in the oven were cooked all the way through, and thinking about the literal ton of homework that I need to get done...and you know what? I felt so lucky. I felt joy in my skill as a homemaker...I felt trust in my husband to comfort our child...I felt creativity in my cooking endeavors, even if I don't really know what I'm doing...I felt excited about the job of learning, a job that, despite it's stress, I love so much. Most of all I felt excitement and hope and joy at the days to come. I felt that giddyness of a child on holiday.

It is in moments like this that I realize that every single thing of life is what you make it. I could spend all my days hoping that everything and everyone around me will make my life turn out how I want it to be...I know well enough that I'd often be dissappointed. The truth is, sometimes things are going to be easy, and sometimes they are going to be really, really hard. But I'm the one with the power. I can make my glasses rose colored if I so choose...and why wouldn't I? One of my favorite songs begins with these words: "To make a mountain of your life is just a choice. But I never learned enough to listen to the voice that told me: Always love."

I want to be that voice tonight...look for the love, people. Don't make a mountain out of a molehill (or a pile of dirt that your could turn into a sand castle). Right now, today's molehill is all you've got. And I promise you, it is something that you can make beautiful.

Happy Monday! Love your life tomorrow...see what happens.

Freud was a dick...Part 1

Posted in By Jordan 3 comments

Topic of this Conversation: Feminism

Note: If you are offended by sexual innuendo, graphic anotomical vocabulary, or an angry woman turned loose on a keyboard, you might want to stop right here.

Note # 2: In this blog, I believe it will be best for me to cite examples rather than to try to just explain my theories. Please don't be offended (reader) if you find yourself in my words. I only desire to glorify you in all your womanly splendor, even if the world around us won't.

Indeed, Freud was a dick....but, then again, with his phallic obsessions, he'd probably consider that a compliment. So, let me rephrase. Freud was a sexist asshole. And if any of you woman readers out there have ever read his theories about the "castration complex" I hope you are just as angry as I am. If you haven't read it, here's a little synopsis based on my limited research and understanding. Men are deathly afraid of castration...okay, what's new? All I have to do is mention Lorena Bobbitt and most of the men I know cringe and reach protectively toward their crotch. But the castration complex doesn't stop there. Freud believes we're all obsessed with the penis...men are obsessed with protecting their's, and us women, we are obsessed with the fact that we don't have one. In fact, every subconscious choice we make can be connected to our preoccupation with that most powerful appendage which we lack.

Excuse me? Am I missing something?? While Freud would say so (haha), I am going to go out on a limb and say that, while I definitely don't have a penis, I think I bring something equally important and powerful to the table.

This brings me to my topic of the day: Feminisim. I am definitely a feminist...but who isn't these days? But here's the thing. In recent conversations, both in class and just with people I know, I'm beginning to think that most people really don't understand what feminism is. I'll tell you what feminism isn't (or at least what it shouldn't be). It isn't about man-hating, and it isn't about equal rights or opportunities or anything like that. I mean, let's be honest. Women pretty much sit on even footing with men these days, politically speaking at least. Feminism is about accepting and appreciating...actually, glorifying all that which is womanly.

And, when I start to think about things that way, I begin to think that maybe, when it comes to today's society, it's quite possible that the asshole has a point. These days, show me a woman who doesn't think of herself as lacking in some way. I don't think that woman exists. But it isn't because she actually is lacking anything at all....it's because she's been trained to believe that she is.

For example, I have a very good friend whose greatest desires in life are to be a wife and stay at home mother one day. I have heard others scoff at these wishes, call her dreams lazy, even empty. I know so called feminists who would say that her traditional goals are directly opposed to the tenets of feminism. To them, I have only one thing to say: Bullshit. She, my friends, is a true feminist, a woman willing to give up everything else to place value on her most obvious feminine virtue, the power to nurture. She doesn't feel the need to search for success in the working world or shatter the glass ceiling to be important (Even though she could if she wanted to). Why do we all believe that we have to prove that we can be everything a man can be in order to be valuable? That isn't feminism. It is honorable and possible and wonderful if that is what you want to do, but you don't have to do it to prove that you are just as good as a man.

The traditional roles that women play are not just valuable...they are essential, powerful, beautiful. Women need to stop identifying themselves in terms of what men are. Just because we don't have a penis doesn't mean we are lacking anything. What women are, what women have traditionally been, is valuable in its own right. I don't need to be all that a man is to be just as powerful, just as important as he is.

Although I have much more to say on this matter, it is late, and I am sleepy, and 7 am will be knocking on my door shortly. Plus, this blog has already gotten pretty long, and I don't want to lose your attention. So, please read, think, and discuss, and I will be back tomorrow with "Freud was a dick...Part 2." Sweet dreams all.

This is not a mommy blog...

Posted in By Jordan 1 comments

If you know me, then you probably already know that I have a two month old child. You probably also know that I have returned to school to get my masters degree in english...not really with the goal of teaching in mind, or any goal really for that matter. I went back to school because I just felt that I wasn't done learning yet. It took a semester long identity crisis and getting pregnant with my first child to realize that.

I bring these things up because I want my blogging intentions to be loud and clear. Maybe this is an attempt to define them more clearly for myself...who knows? The point is that there is no way the influence of my new motherhood won't permeate my writing. Having a child is like nothing else I could have imagined in the way it effects your sense of yourself. The second they handed me that baby, everything I knew about myself shifted, and through the past two months, I have been trying to navigate the new terrain of my life. It isn't just about getting used to poopy diapers and midnight feedings and hour long crying spells (his and mine), although these things do call for quite the adjustment, let me tell you. What I mean is that, now that the title of "mom" is permanently stamped onto my soul, I have to figure out where everything else that I was before I was mom now fits. Who am I? That question always seems to be answered in bits and pieces for me through writing. The most important thing I've learned: I am in a constant metamorphasis...and if I'm not, if I'm not changing and not growing, then I'm not happy. But, I digress...

What I don't want is for this to turn into a "mommy blog", and here's why: it is a mistake for me to define myself in terms of my relationships with others...I think it is a mistake for all of us, and yet so many of us do it all the time. In order to fully explain this, I think I should tell you how I came to be a mother...but then, back to discussion time, where I'm sure the topic of my motherhood will occaisionally intrude but should never be this blogs sole subject.

I have wanted to be a mom for a long time, perhaps since my first semester of college, at which time I believe my real growth as an individual began. When I say that I wanted to be a mom, don't mistake that for the phrase 'I wanted to have a baby'. What I began to desire through the process of my intellectual development was a private forum within which I could be exactly who I wanted to be...a place where my beliefs would matter, and my intentions would be pure and powerful. I wanted to create something...or rather, I wanted to create someone. Please don't mistake this desire for a god-complex or something. What I mean is that, through my own process of becoming, I wanted to help somebody else become, and see what came of it. I think that is the root of the real desire to become parents in all of us. We want to see if we will be good at it...we believe we will be good at it. Some people think the desire to become a parent is a primal instinct, a result of hormones that are intended to initiate species survival. Maybe so...but I think there's something intellectual at work there, too...something spiritual, really. It helps that I have been in a stable, commited relationship for a very long time. When you are in the most societally acceptable position to become a mother, there really isn't anything or anyone stopping you. Everybody wants a new baby around. So, I checked a few things off my to-do list: graduate college, move closer to my family, buy a house...check, check, check....and a year later, I was pregnant. I really don't have the words to describe being pregnant...perhaps I will tackle this subject in a later blog. But I can say that it is a very spiritual process. It was the first time I felt really connected to my own body, the first time I was really able to love and appreciate my body for what it could do. A few months later, there I was with a little person in my arms, and a new sense of pressure and responsibility on my shoulders that I could never have tried to imagine.

If I'm honest, I have to say that I've spent the last eight weeks running around like a chicken with my head cut off...jumping from one chore to the next: preparing for the next cycle of eating, sleeping, and pooping, getting a few household jobs done between these cycles, trying to get done as much of the mountain of homework I've had that is humanly possible. I've lost my real sense of myself, pushing that person aside to fulfill the roles of mother, wife, student. And, I'm starting to see the trouble there. If I want to be a good mother, or a good anything else for that matter, I'm going to have to make sure that I don't start defining myself simply as "mother." I am still Jordan...just Jordan. Just a person who is always becoming. I am now also a mother, and, although it's hard not to, I don't have to feel guilty about wanting to define myself first as me, and then as my son's mother, my husband's wife, my mother's daughter...etc. I have learned that the real person I am creating here is myself, and that my job as a mother is not to create my son, but to help him learn how to create himself.

So the writing in this blog is aimed at my own self creation and nothing more. I am a million different things, and I hope one day my son will find in himself a million different things. I hope he is indefinable. I hope he doesn't waste his time trying to fulfill the roles that the world thinks he should in the ways that the world thinks he should. I hope he will learn that if he just works hard to be always becoming himself, then he will be the best son, the best father, the best friend, the best person he could ever possibly be.

Title

Posted in By Jordan 6 comments

Good morning, twelve a.m. Isn't it funny how insomnia strikes at the most inopportune times? I have been on maternity leave for two months now, and the one night I can't sleep is the night before I have to return to work. And my baby's been asleep since nine! So, I've decided to blog. My experience with blogging is limited. My family-in-law has a group blog through which we keep in touch, and I read a few of my friends' blogs frequently. Other than that...nothing. So, we'll see how it goes. I don't have a plan here. I am just going to write, when I want to write, about what I want to write. Before we begin, let me give a little disclaimer: I'm not going to spell check and I'm not going to revise. This is coming straight from the hip...right out of my mind and onto the page...or, rather, into cyberspace, I guess. I won't be gramatically correct, and I'm going to put commas anywhere I damn well want to. Because I don't care if you think I'm smart. All I care about is getting my thoughts out, and I don't want to stop and think about it, okay? If you can't deal with that, then move on...it's your own time your wasting. Oh, and I will definitely overuse the elipsis...sorry, charlie.

Conversation Topic #1: The title of this blog...

I don't really have any talents. I can't sing. I can't draw. I can't dance. I can't juggle. I'm not good at sports. The title of this blog stems from that realization. One day I was having a conversation with a friend...we had been talking for hours and hours, into the wee hours of the morning, in fact. You know the type of conversation I'm talking about...it starts out casual, about the current goings-on of one or the other of your lives, popular culture, gossip, etc..but eventually you get philosophical. It was a "meaning of life" type of conversation. Anyway, sometime toward the end of this discussion, we got to the realization that I am completely and utterly talentless. Of course, my friend, nurturer that she is, tells me that of course I have talents....but then she pauses. So I tell her that, yes, maybe I can cook some pretty mean apple dumplings, and I do have a knack for word games. But that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm saying is, I could never be in a talent show. People don't care about the things I do. I will never have an audience. So, we moved on...we talked some more, about confidence, the effects of praise on children, how to parent children in general, whether the motivation to have children was biological or not...you know, the usual places the topic of talent (or lack thereof) might lead us. And then my friend says, "you can talk. People would listen to you talk about things." So there's my talent...I can talk about things...I can lead discussion time. This blog will be my discussion, one-sided as it may be. Lucky you, reader (if you exist). You can be the audience for my talent show. Let's talk!
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