Conversation Time With Jordan

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.

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.

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...

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.”

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.

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!

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.

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.