February 27, 2010
The Project - Day 3
A old friend of mine has been going humorously public with her life as a single woman just past the threshold of forty. She’s one of those women other people can’t believe is single. She’s gorgeous, smart, successful, creative, you’d look at her and think, good lord, how stupid are men these days that they let this one roam about untagged? Unfortunately being smart, successful and creative is sometimes a liability, especially when your age group includes men who are looking for looking for arm candy to build their ego as they slink into their next stage of life. Or maybe it isn’t an age group thing, considering my husband came home from teaching and reported a conversation between the girls in his class talking about how smart boys liked dumb girls so they could feel smarter. The girls were saying they actually liked having stupid boyfriends, one even confessed “my boyfriend is too dumb to even figure out that I’m way smarter than he is!” Perhaps this is the new frontier? Himbos for the clever girls? I suppose it’s an option, but having gone the “sweet and stupid” route a couple times, I ended up marrying “smart as heck but a pain in my ass”, so I guess that makes my preference clear.
It has brought up a lot of memories, reading my friend’s posts about the trials and tribulations of online dating in the new millennium. I vividly remember my days of “dating practice”. My roommate came up with this name for our online dating adventures, since this was our practice for being social, going out, getting a dinner or a drink so that when the time came for “real” dating, we would feel like old pros. I’m not sure it really worked out that way. I had a few horrific dates, some rather blah ones, a couple of horrific relationships and then the guy I married. That might seem like zero to 60 and in a way it was. We met online in January, first date a few weeks later, in April I met his family, in June we moved in together, July he met my family and proposed and by November we were married. This should be all the more amazing when you consider I can take up to 20 minutes deciding on a flavor of ice cream. It is nearly impossible for me to pull the trigger on any decision and yet I got engaged in approximately two seconds.
Friends who hopefully troll the online ads want to know the secret, how did I go from personal ads to happily ever after, and I’m not sure how to tell them the truth. The truth is, there is no happily ever after. Marriage is ridiculously hard work, especially when you’ve spent most of your life being a selfish single bitch who never had to concern herself with a damn thing other than her own whims. Forget that upturned toilet seat, just having to share your space with another individual is enough to make your skin crawl at times. Of course, I am an introvert with a capital “I” so this perhaps does not describe every late bloomer, but for me, the first year of marriage was a massive adjustment.
Is it worth it? I think so. I love my husband, I love my son, and while there are sacrifices I selfishly wish I didn’t have to make, there are certainly no regrets. More later. I’ve hit my page and the ball and chain is wondering why I’m not in bed.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Friday, February 26, 2010
The Project - Day 2
February 26, 2010
The Project - Day 2
Most people love Advent and so do I, but mostly what I love are all the pagan trappings that have been hooked on to Christianity like a shiny ornament. I love all things Jul, the tree, the mistletoe, wassail, solstice music by Paul Winter and Golden Bough and all the delicious food that attends the season. However, I have a private chuckle at slogans like “He’s the Reason for the Season” since I believe that no, He’s not. The reason for the season is the death and rebirth of the year, which is why we celebrate His birth at this time. I love the Nativity, but I feel it is part of the entire “rebirth” cycle that happens at the turning of the year.
Lent is when I feel like a Christian. While there are certainly pagan traditions in abundance surrounding Easter and the days leading to it, I’ve never connected with them in the same way I do the traditions of Advent. For me, Lent is like faith, extremely personal and the traditions are my own, or at least the ones I have chosen in my adulthood.
When I think of Lenten seasons past, I think of my years with my college choir and their monumental spring concert, I think of Wednesday nights at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine with Madeline L’Engle presiding, I think of receiving ashes at Grand Central Station, I think of solitary walks through the Cloisters Museum, scribbling in my notebook and taking pictures of the view. I remember my first year in Colorado, snowed in past all reason and finally escaping for a solitary vacation, completely alone with my thoughts.
It stands to reason, I suppose, that my Lenten observance has suffered some in the years since I married and had a child. Lent was a time when I celebrated my alone-ness, when I turned to good use what was often a burdensome solitude. Now I am blessed with my own family and solitude is an infrequent burden. Also, as my husband is Jewish we try to spend Passover with his family, which has frequently meant I miss out on Holy Week. Don’t get me wrong, I loves me some Pesach, but I miss the solemnity of that transition from reflection to joy that for me means Spring, rebirth and second chances.
Many people observe Lent by fasting, physically or psychologically. They give up meat, chocolate, gossip or in more contemporary currency, facebook or the internet. I’ve never totally connected with this tradition, as most of the people I know who observe it discard their Lenten fasts about as quickly as their New Year’s Resolutions. I just never saw the point. Lately though I’ve been thinking about fasting, in a spiritual sense. Fasting is a mortification of the body that is supposed to bring us closer to God. Put another way, I believe Lent is when we seek to find that thing which is separating us from God and to remove it from our lives as best we can. (Following this logic, I could never give up chocolate, for I am sure it brings me closer to God!)
I thought about giving up Facebook, or texting or some other kind of fast on my addiction to technology, but none of that felt like an authentic barrier to my relationship with God, or that part of myself that is still and quiet enough to connect with whatever power that exists when I pray. The problem is not in the technology but in myself. Then, the other day when I was thinking about how I feel like I have given up my artistic self, it came to me. If Lent is about giving up those things that separate from God, from the creative force, then I needed to give up what was blocking me from creating.
So this year, for the first time, I am attempting to observe Lent by fasting, or abstinence. This year I am abstaining from excuses. I am abstaining from fear. I am abstaining from lowered expectations. I am abstaining from all things that separate me from my own creative force and therefore the original Creative Force in whose image I am made. May God give me the strength to prevail.
The Project - Day 2
Most people love Advent and so do I, but mostly what I love are all the pagan trappings that have been hooked on to Christianity like a shiny ornament. I love all things Jul, the tree, the mistletoe, wassail, solstice music by Paul Winter and Golden Bough and all the delicious food that attends the season. However, I have a private chuckle at slogans like “He’s the Reason for the Season” since I believe that no, He’s not. The reason for the season is the death and rebirth of the year, which is why we celebrate His birth at this time. I love the Nativity, but I feel it is part of the entire “rebirth” cycle that happens at the turning of the year.
Lent is when I feel like a Christian. While there are certainly pagan traditions in abundance surrounding Easter and the days leading to it, I’ve never connected with them in the same way I do the traditions of Advent. For me, Lent is like faith, extremely personal and the traditions are my own, or at least the ones I have chosen in my adulthood.
When I think of Lenten seasons past, I think of my years with my college choir and their monumental spring concert, I think of Wednesday nights at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine with Madeline L’Engle presiding, I think of receiving ashes at Grand Central Station, I think of solitary walks through the Cloisters Museum, scribbling in my notebook and taking pictures of the view. I remember my first year in Colorado, snowed in past all reason and finally escaping for a solitary vacation, completely alone with my thoughts.
It stands to reason, I suppose, that my Lenten observance has suffered some in the years since I married and had a child. Lent was a time when I celebrated my alone-ness, when I turned to good use what was often a burdensome solitude. Now I am blessed with my own family and solitude is an infrequent burden. Also, as my husband is Jewish we try to spend Passover with his family, which has frequently meant I miss out on Holy Week. Don’t get me wrong, I loves me some Pesach, but I miss the solemnity of that transition from reflection to joy that for me means Spring, rebirth and second chances.
Many people observe Lent by fasting, physically or psychologically. They give up meat, chocolate, gossip or in more contemporary currency, facebook or the internet. I’ve never totally connected with this tradition, as most of the people I know who observe it discard their Lenten fasts about as quickly as their New Year’s Resolutions. I just never saw the point. Lately though I’ve been thinking about fasting, in a spiritual sense. Fasting is a mortification of the body that is supposed to bring us closer to God. Put another way, I believe Lent is when we seek to find that thing which is separating us from God and to remove it from our lives as best we can. (Following this logic, I could never give up chocolate, for I am sure it brings me closer to God!)
I thought about giving up Facebook, or texting or some other kind of fast on my addiction to technology, but none of that felt like an authentic barrier to my relationship with God, or that part of myself that is still and quiet enough to connect with whatever power that exists when I pray. The problem is not in the technology but in myself. Then, the other day when I was thinking about how I feel like I have given up my artistic self, it came to me. If Lent is about giving up those things that separate from God, from the creative force, then I needed to give up what was blocking me from creating.
So this year, for the first time, I am attempting to observe Lent by fasting, or abstinence. This year I am abstaining from excuses. I am abstaining from fear. I am abstaining from lowered expectations. I am abstaining from all things that separate me from my own creative force and therefore the original Creative Force in whose image I am made. May God give me the strength to prevail.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
The Project - Day 1
February 25, 2010
The Project - Day 1
I saw a movie clip today comparing how much time students spent facebooking versus how much time they spent writing for school and it hit a little close to home. I used to write a lot, poems, stories, journal entries, reviews, whatever fit my fixation of the moment. Many of these writings are lost, but others are mouldering away in boxes, mostly cribbed into small steno pads that I used to take with me everywhere. Often these were the same pads I used for rehearsals or studying music on the subway, so you might find a stab at a sonnet side by side with an IPA transcription of Dich teure Halle. I’m not sure when these efforts started to fade. It might have begun as early as my departure from New York, as so much of my writing time was found on subways, subway platforms, city buses and impoverished afternoons in parks or museums. I am not saying that cars are not conduits to creativity, but they are not exactly the proper venue for sweating out iambic pentameter.
It could be that going back to school contributed to my written decline. Nothing stifles creativity like academia, or so the romantic vision of the creative artist would suggest. However, I know the nail in the coffin was the 7 lb. 14 oz. bundle of joy I received three years ago. I became a chronicler of his infancy, working on an elaborate website, combining the creative forces of motherhood and words--I would be a mommy blogger, or at least a mommy chronicler or something. Then the day came when he learned to move from one place to another and my life as I knew it ended. Happily, with joy, but definitively ended. Clearly I was not cut out to be a mommy blogger who somehow juggles the laundry and her freelance job and children dressed in organic cotton, all while sharing clever bon mots on the subject of poo and discount codes for cloth diaper covers. I therefore abandoned hope of being elevated to the electronic status of supermom and contented myself with making occasional stabs at the laundry.
At least this is the narrative I constructed in my head. Creative woman, slowly dies at the hands of her precious darling child, smiling all the while, “really, it was worth it. . .” Cue curtain.
I suppose it could be true, but it isn’t. I didn’t stop writing. I write constantly. I write emails, I write facebook statuses, I write comments on other people’s facebook statuses (statii?) I write long, keening letters to people who inspire me or piss me off. I occasionally write comments on people’s blogs or I write website copy or small recountings of our day for affectionate relatives. I write all the time. I just do it in such a manner that I am in no way accountable to my artistic self and that allows me to maintain my own self image as a creative martyr to domesticity. I’d almost admire the skill it takes if it weren’t so completely shallow and pathetic.
So this is the plan. Every day I will write a page of something, just to write. If it embarrassingly ungrammatical, irksomely self-indulgent or just plain sucks, so be it.
The Project - Day 1
I saw a movie clip today comparing how much time students spent facebooking versus how much time they spent writing for school and it hit a little close to home. I used to write a lot, poems, stories, journal entries, reviews, whatever fit my fixation of the moment. Many of these writings are lost, but others are mouldering away in boxes, mostly cribbed into small steno pads that I used to take with me everywhere. Often these were the same pads I used for rehearsals or studying music on the subway, so you might find a stab at a sonnet side by side with an IPA transcription of Dich teure Halle. I’m not sure when these efforts started to fade. It might have begun as early as my departure from New York, as so much of my writing time was found on subways, subway platforms, city buses and impoverished afternoons in parks or museums. I am not saying that cars are not conduits to creativity, but they are not exactly the proper venue for sweating out iambic pentameter.
It could be that going back to school contributed to my written decline. Nothing stifles creativity like academia, or so the romantic vision of the creative artist would suggest. However, I know the nail in the coffin was the 7 lb. 14 oz. bundle of joy I received three years ago. I became a chronicler of his infancy, working on an elaborate website, combining the creative forces of motherhood and words--I would be a mommy blogger, or at least a mommy chronicler or something. Then the day came when he learned to move from one place to another and my life as I knew it ended. Happily, with joy, but definitively ended. Clearly I was not cut out to be a mommy blogger who somehow juggles the laundry and her freelance job and children dressed in organic cotton, all while sharing clever bon mots on the subject of poo and discount codes for cloth diaper covers. I therefore abandoned hope of being elevated to the electronic status of supermom and contented myself with making occasional stabs at the laundry.
At least this is the narrative I constructed in my head. Creative woman, slowly dies at the hands of her precious darling child, smiling all the while, “really, it was worth it. . .” Cue curtain.
I suppose it could be true, but it isn’t. I didn’t stop writing. I write constantly. I write emails, I write facebook statuses, I write comments on other people’s facebook statuses (statii?) I write long, keening letters to people who inspire me or piss me off. I occasionally write comments on people’s blogs or I write website copy or small recountings of our day for affectionate relatives. I write all the time. I just do it in such a manner that I am in no way accountable to my artistic self and that allows me to maintain my own self image as a creative martyr to domesticity. I’d almost admire the skill it takes if it weren’t so completely shallow and pathetic.
So this is the plan. Every day I will write a page of something, just to write. If it embarrassingly ungrammatical, irksomely self-indulgent or just plain sucks, so be it.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Posts
