new one

Well, i guess i wouldn't be "blogging my life" if i
didn't show why i haven't been blogging my life for a few days (she weighed 7 lbs 10 ounces):

Write what’s in front of you.

I'm sitting in my morning spot. I get up before the sun, make a cup of coffee and sit for hours, getting up only when nature calls. And even that I postpone as long as possible.

On my lap is a cool new 'lap desk' with a hole in the center that helps to keep my laptop from burning my left thigh as it did for the many months before I found the foam and cardboard wonder. I lean back, legs raised, in an Ethan Allen recliner. It has maroon cushions and cherry wood armrests wide enough to hold my cup of coffee. There are wooden slats on each side - arts and crafts style. It is one of six matching pieces of furniture in this, my living room.

As odd as it sounds this furniture, or the thought of this furniture, helped ground me during a difficult, sleepless night back in fall of 2005; I was trying to sleep on a cot in a giant, noisy tent that slept fifty or more. It was a tent city in Baton Rouge LA and it had been built by FEMA to house Katrina relief workers. The National Health and Human Services had picked me as one of the thousands who had volunteered. I felt like I had hit the lottery.

The summer before, Pat and I decided it was time to get rid of the collection of hand-me-downs and Goodwill treasures that had served us well for many years. We were both professionals, after all, and wasn’t it time we had a set of matching living room furniture? It was to be delivered while I was away.

As I lay there the first night, feeling silly in my nightgown, (how did everyone else know to bring pajamas?) I was sure I wanted to be there but oh, so unsure I’d be competent to the next day’s tasks. But, instead of fretting, I thought about what the furniture would look like in my living room. I placed and moved each piece in my head as I tried to fall asleep. It helped me remember I had a living room. A living. A room. A house and a home to return to. Gratefully, I fell asleep.

Gratefully I went to work the next day, and the day after that, sharing my skills and giving my heart to people of all ages, status, and genders in shelter after shelter full of grieving, newly homeless victims of devastation that was not only the result of the natural disaster named Katrina, but also local and federal government ineptitude.

I finished my stint, a peak experience in my life, but I was not the same person

when I returned home. I had a renewed appreciation for the vulnerability and preciousness

of life, a new found respect for the constant fight to prevent entropy and chaos and incompetence from reigning.

And in truth, I was almost surprised to find new furniture in my living room when I returned, so far from my past, from my life, had I roamed in those two short weeks.

My ten minutes are up. Interesting where the prompt to “write what’s in front of you” has taken me…

Deleted Posts

I have deleted two posts - In His Words: An Honest Piece of Fiction, Parts 1 and 2.

To my Memoir Class classmates:

I'll put them on Blackboard, In fact for those of you who get this go ahead and read them with my midterm draft of "The Breach". I should have thought putting them together sooner, "An Honest Piece of Fiction" actually goes well with The Breach. Two sides of a coin, so to speak.

Janice

Reponse to “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City” by Nick Flynn

While writing about his deeply personal experience, Nick Flynn focused a sharp light on one of our society’s failings in “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City”. He peppered his book with short vignettes of the lives of the downtrodden, which helped to illuminate, at least for this reader, the impact of our cultural neglect and/or misunderstanding of both the causes and consequences homelessness. He showed us in great detail the potential harm that can come from addiction, mental illness, poverty, or generational/parental incompetence, especially when they overlap as they often do.

Through honest reflection Nick Flynn allowed us to accompany him on his transformative journey. Throughout the book he maintained respect for human dignity, even when the characters’ own self-dignity appeared to have vaporized. The book included humor, which was difficult given the intensity and sadness of much of the material, and irony. In addition, there were some very tender scenes, which really gave the book its heart.

The book has a nice balance of lyric and narrative style. There was an eloquence of language throughout the prose, but there was one chapter in particular that stood out: “Same Again” p 221 was quite powerful. This is one I would use (with permission, of course) in my teaching about addiction for my family medicine trainees. But I was also drawn to find out what happened next to Nick and his father, as well as to see where their new and tenderhearted relationship would take them. For me, it was this narrative arc and the narrow narrative distance - the intimacy with which he dealt with his subject matter - that was most compelling. In many cases it felt as if he were writing, and we were observing, life’s very moments as he lived them. An example was the moment he videotaped his finger as he pushed the bell that would ring up in his father’s Section 8 apartment.

Each chapter stood, if not alone, on its own merit. There was much ‘experimentation’ with chapter styles, which I enjoyed, especially the italicized comments that popped into the prose, most of which were quotes from his father. I was less interested with the chapters done in play format; these left me a bit confused and didn’t add much to my understanding of plot or the characters.

The overarching metaphor of the lifeboat was woven into the stories in various ways beginning with his grandfather’s legacy of having invented one. In addition, Nick lived in isolation on a boat for many of his difficult years. There were many variations on saving one another in the book, for example: Jonathan thought his book would save him, Nick and his buddies worked to save the hopeless and sometime helpless men in and out of the shelter, and finally, and perhaps the theme of the book - would/could Nick be a lifeboat for his father?

The most interesting part of the book for me was that Nick and his father seemed to be living parallel lives. Each struggled with the push and pull, away from / then towards one another, (mostly push). Each struggled with relationships, addiction, and the love and loss of Jody. Both spiraled down. In fact, part of the appeal of the book was to find out how low they might go, and whether or not they could, or would, be able to climb back out.

I loved the final chapter; it captured this character, his father, very well. This was something Nick had to piece together and build for himself year after year (and for us chapter by chapter) - his father was at once grandiose, narcissistic, funny, addicted, demented, irritating, unpredictable, and … incredible. And, thanks to the clarity and honesty of his writing, credible.

Ultimately, it seems, Nick accepted who his parents were, and weren’t. What his life was, and wasn’t. This, along with some formal- and self-education and recovery from addiction, allowed him to transform his life into one he could, and would, enjoy living.

Capturing the Color

Blogging, which, to be fair, I’ve only done for a month, has its drawbacks. It feels something like hollering back into a long dark tunnel, as you’re walking out. Or maybe it’s more like setting off one of those parade poppers that have colorful streamers – there’s a big beautiful burst, but then the streamers fall to the ground behind us, ignored.

OK, I’m still working on my similes.

Writing a blog is homework for a Memoir class at Chatham University taught by the extraordinary Sheryl St Germain.* It is intended to be a place where we can respond to the prompts from "Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir," by Natalie Goldberg, or respond to assigned readings. In short, it's a place to exercise our writing muscles.

It’s a pleasure to read my classmate’s blogs, on which we are to comment. And I enjoy reading what others say in their comments, but here’s where it gets cumbersome.

Everyone is busy, and I’m lucky that am only taking the one class. But even for me, it feels too time consuming to track back reading the comments about the comments, and then, days later, more comments back. I suspect readership, even among the willing classmates, falls off quickly. So final comments remain unread, ignored, mere litter at the parade.

And, darn it, there’s some real interesting writing going on there.

So, as I sit here exercising my writing muscle I realize it is time to come ‘round to a brilliant conclusion. Maybe it’s this: if they’re beautiful, let’s pick up the streamers, hold on to them and run with delight.

*read: apple

Response to Lori Jakiela's Chatham Reading

I'd never heard of the term “Chick Lit” before last term and I must say, I find it a tiny bit irritating. Lori Jakiela told us during her reading last night that her book, “Miss New York has Everything,” is marketed as such. Maybe I don’t get it. I’m a chick, though, given I’m a lesbian it's possible that I have less then usual chick-i-ness, but I enjoyed her book, and her readings. I like how she takes us on a ride through her life throwing in punch lines here and there.

She also told us that her editors have pegged her as a humor writer. I can understand why. She’s good at it; I’d say she was a natural if I hadn’t heard from her own lips that she wasn’t, that she grew up quite serious and had to teach herself humor. Even her self-described “dark” reading, one about realizing her birth mother was a paranoid schizophrenic, even that was humorous. She described that her birth mother would pepper LJ’s in-box with provocative comments, then scream, “DO NOT RESPOND” and change her profile.

I guess when she says dark she means deep - the tough side of life, the real side. I think the more she delves into that side, the richer her work will be. Sure, Dave Barry is funny, but rich? Rarely. Do we have a nickname for his type of writing?

J

When is the last time you were truly happy? Prompt 19, Jean Rhys II

Happiness is so cliché. Really. Happy? What does it mean precisely?

Recently there have been moments that have brought me palpable joy, you know, the kind you feel in your body as well as your mind –

1. Monday night, my classmates and teacher had praise for a reworking (my 5th revision … I know, it takes 11) of an essay that is eaking its way out of me. (That might not be an official word, eaking.) My heart just jumped with joy that I might be onto something.
2. Within the first hours of setting up my blog a young woman from Tennessee signed on to follow. I was shocked and delighted.
3. On a slightly deeper level, my son clearly recognized that it was grossly inappropriate (“He’s a creeper” were his exact words) when his girlfriend’s obstetrician said, “From now on the pants come down,” (indicating he planned internal exams).
4. Oh, here’s a good one: seeing my mother last weekend for the first time since the chemo effects wore off. She had dark, present eyes, a genuine life-is-so-good-to-me smile, and brand new white hair in soft thick curls. It’s gorgeous. People stop her in a store to ask where she gets her hair done. Its known as the ‘chemo curl,’ but my Mom says, “Well, honey, God knew I was 6 months with no hair, so now He’s giving me this. He’s like that.”


But the last time I was “truly happy”? That’s difficult. it's hard to remember a time before the deep dark streak of worry blocked it. Certainly it would be before my young son’s impending fatherhood, before my mother’s ovarian cancer and certainly, before the sexual assault.

I’d have to go way back, I suspect, to remember through-and-through joy. Perhaps even before my son was born – parenting has included a boatload of worry for me. Before that I feared I would “do harm” as I was learning medicine. And then there was the worry about getting into medical school at all.

And let’s not forget the fear and anxiety about being lesbian in a homophobic world. And that was a powerful place compared to the lack of power I felt relative to my boyfriend and father, before “women’s lib” hit.

Was it when I was a teenager, then, that I was truly happy? No, I was self conscious and insecure. And there were all those discipline problems in grammar school.

So, when was I not worried?

Wait... I know this. It was in the little yellow school bus right before I stuck my neck out and the bus driver landed his frustration about his busload chaos and noise on me. Right before that I was truly happy.

For more on that story see "sticking my neck out", my blog entry on january 20th.

http://janicea-blog.blogspot.com/2009/01/normal-0-another-potential-theme-for-my.html
.

Write about the first time you were afraid. Prompt, 19 – Jean Rhys

A giant patch of darkness stretches out between the lamp on my dresser and me. This darkness is huge, almost liquid. Cool. Pure black, top to bottom. Nothing specific. Just that.

The hall light’s on, sure, but for some reason the light stops short, right at my bedroom door. From there on in I’ll be on my own. I’m a decent jumper but I can’t make it all the way to my dresser. So I stand here under the dim hall light, feet scared, hands sticky, tapping my fingers together, and thinking, thinking… Should I run real fast? Jump as far as I can, then run? Where is everybody, anyway?

I take a deep breath … ready? ... Ready? Wait … wait. I can’t do it. How am I going to get in there? Rats. Wait.

I know this room. Theresa’s bed is against the wall on the far right, and, if I make it, Donna’s and my bunk beds will be behind me. There’s a closet to the left and the painted blue dresser is directly across from the door and a tad to the right. It has three long drawers, one for each of us. On the far side of the dresser sits the lamp, the heart of the room. It’s a tiny little thing with the switch about half way up, just under its dingy shade. I just have to get there.

OK, I can do it. Here goes … with deep breath and a scream, I take a giant jump, Aggghhhh! Then another quick step and I grab the light, nearly knocking it off the dresser before switching it on.

Whew. Safe at last. Now, that wasn’t so hard… was it?

..