buns! how i would love to be sitting at j&b with you discussing and researching theater of the oppressed.
the most beautiful gray sky decemeber
it's raining in cooper texas. living in lubbock can cause one to forget what rain sounds like, and oh how i've missed it! right now i think it's more beautiful than anything in my itunes.
tracey and i are painting a sign for a local telephone co-op this break, a 10x23' sign that begins 7' high on the old tired bricks.
tom was a really big help and aided in our transportation of 10' and 30' ladders. he made it look not very heavy, but looks can be decieving. tracey and i have worked out a system though, and we are now pros at raising the ladder to 17'. tracey loves it up high.
Observations from the Dining Room
Observations, memories, thoughts, darkness, and weight
For Christmas I got a chinese coin with the center cut out (an aunt went to china) and Barbara and I made feng shui hangers from them...and by that I mean we tied Celtic knots through them with sky blue and lime green chord and braided bells into the medley.
When you feel like writing, take advantage of it. I have a cup of tea, the cold snow outside the window, Barbara, my Dad, and Kristin home, an entry for the blog, and a new document open to rewrite a scene for my Costa Rica story.
I listened to a Radio Head song on Pandora, unaware the band was radio head, and liked it.
Barbara used a picture of a Victoria Secret's model as wrapping paper for a gift for my grandmother and wrote "You'll be a Hot Mama when you use this".
My sister and I went to the rec to work out today and when we got back, my dad held the door shut as I tried to open the door. He was in a bad mood for the morning, so it surprised me to see him trying to joke.
I'm listening to a song called "wildwood flower" by David Grisman and Tony Rice on an album called Tone Poems...which I think it a really pretty combination of words.
Words, words, words!
Roger Landis is not on Pandora. Nor is Mason Brown.
Mason Brown goes to Naropa. More incentive?
I think what one person considers an opportunity another could easily see as a mistake.
Will only time say who is right? Or are both right? Or neither?
Who can tell?
Why do we try to tell?
I'm not as scared of eternity as I used to be. I've become more resolved to the idea that when we die we could exist as energy and nothing more. Or nothing less?
The music on pandora is really pretty right now. I like when tea, music, and writing align and leave me feeling inspired and peaceful.
who are you selling it for?!
there is snow in cooper texas, not much but some! my grandma is as crazy as ever. she asked tracey and i, as we brought her potato salad, if we were selling it for church or school and who she had to pay. i got 'terri' hugs from my dad. my mom is frantic and refuses to use newspaper for wrapping paper. tom eats ten eggs at a time.
things don't change much! and that's ok with me.
Snow & Wind
I finished looking through the Celtic Christmas photos...that and playing through smeceno horo and listening to the concert online (http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/3297339) while baking rolls brought me back to it.
It was a good concert.
I would argue that it was one of our best. My parents and friends comments ranged from the concert being fantastic to being unable to hear to wanting the ensemble to perform more and the guest artists less.
What made the concert amazing for me (in part) was the guest artists. Playing with them, sharing the stage, and being part of the music coming from all of our different instruments was exhilarating. Too strong a word? I don't think so. I felt a connection to the music and the people playing and listening that I had never experienced in concert band or our other recitals. It was, in part, because of the familiarity of the music, the knowledge that this is the last time I will sing Mari Lwyd while carrying the totem, and Tracey, Glen, and Ty playing along with me. But it was also playing along side of people who had dedicated their lives to music and were amazing at it.
Maybe it's hard to appreciate their talent (from my parent's perspective) when they probably don't know what the guest artists were playing, must less the style and technique.
But I'm glad they were there. I am glad to be part of an ensemble that brings together a community to share, learn from, and enjoy Celtic music.
And I feel no matter where I go after May, I can carry that with me.
BUT! It snowed today. That is really why I came here to blog, but I got distracted by nostalgia and pictures.
So I will post some pictures from the snow.
Here is Matti. She looks hilarious when the snow is too deep and she has to bound.
The snow was so deep! It is still deep!
Kristin wouldn't stop eating my dough...
Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde
There is another blog post about Gross Indecency forthcoming, but for now I want to leave everyone with a quote.
The play ends with a prose poem by Oscar Wilde called "House of Judgment." "House of Judgment" is about man coming before God. God recalls everything man has done...bad things, and says "surely I will send thee into Hell. Even into Hell will I send thee.
And man cried out: 'thou cannot.'
And God said to man: 'wherefore can I not send thee to Hell, and for what reason?'
'Because in Hell I have always lived.'"
I thought that was a really powerful ending for a play.
Go in peace.
Questing for answers
The semester is winding to a close. I turned in my 15 page South Africa essay last friday, my Austin story (Moss, Sea, and Sky) with critical introduction on Tuesday, finished classes up, and met with Caswell today. I have the rough draft for my Honors Thesis done (with the exception of a final scene) and wanted to know where I go from here. I read over it all yesterday and...didn't like it. It's a good narrative, but that's all I feel like it is this way. As Professor Caswell put it: I have themes, I just don't know where I'm going with them and they need to deepen.
(fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!!!!- Ty McDonald)
Anyway, so he told me not to work on it anymore. I was going to start revising it, but he said it would help me make the connections and see the larger picture if I set it down and left it alone for a month.
BAH! SO I am essentially done. I just need to put it together in an official honors thesis format, turn it in, and do my Spanish final.
BUT as one of the ways in which I am going to "deepen" and "expand" my honors thesis is to include quotes and commentary by other writers.
I'm starting with two of the books I read while I was in Costa Rica and then moving onto Costa Rican literature.
I am very excited about all of this.
So I wanted to share the advice, because I think it's applicable to more situations than just writing. Maybe we should just set things down, let them be, and then come back to them. The answers will come.
The answer is 42.
-Howard Fisher (my former writing mentor)
The answer is 47.
-Rajiv (my physical therapist)
Part of the Healing Process
I have finished From Our Voices: Art Educators and Artists Speak Out About Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Issues and while I do not plan to be an art educator, I feel like their stories are applicable to anyone who finds themselves in a teaching role.
I posted a quote a few entries back from the anthology, but I would like to add some more.
This is from Ed Check's essay "The Pleasures of Adolescence":
"What I lost for so many years because of public humiliation and cultural and self imposed homophobia and misogyny, I am slowly recapturing through my art and writing. I use memory and imagination to explore the simultaneous pains and pleasures of growing up gay in a straight world" (Check, 155).
I found this to be a really encouraging thought. In one of the previous essays, Ed discussed his school and college experience as a gay man and it's hard to read at times. So to hear him say that he is not bitter or angry about his past, but rejoices in it is amazing. I liked that he was "recapturing" his past and experiences with his writing and art, because that sounds empowering. I've been thinking a lot lately about the difference between empowerment and powerful. I feel like our society tends to use "powerful" more often than empowerment, but I think there should be a distinction.
To me, empowerment is good. It is working with yourself or others to realize and teach rights to happiness, life, love, and freedom. To me, being powerful is the opposite. Powerful is imposing on someone's right to love, happiness, life, and freedom.
Art empowers Ed. Through art, he empowers himself.
Thoughts for the Days
Hello AMAZING friends!
I am going to repost from Coyote Banjo, because I feel like his words may help you:
So here's your plan:
"1. I am obligated to work constructively and peacefully toward completion of my degree requirements. Therefore I must spend some time each day working on coursework.
"2. I am obligated to work constructively and peacefully toward my own health. This means I must spend some time each day exercising, eating healthfully, and working on emotional health issues
"3. I am obligated to work constructively and peacefully on my professional obligations. This means I must spend some time each day on assistantship, teaching, and/or other professional work.
"4. I am obligated to work constructively and peacefully on my own artistic development and self-expression. This means I must spend some time each day on art, music, writing, or other creative activity.
"5. I am obligated to work constructively and peacefully on my own emotional community and support network. This means I must spend some time each day enjoying my living space, communicating with friends, thinking about or communicating with family, and so on. In addition, I must spend some time each day thinking about ways I can actively be a good friend and support-network-member for people who are important to me, and taking action on those thoughts.
"6. I am obligated to work constructively and peacefully on my own spiritual health. This means I must spend some time each day in prayer, meditation, visualization, or other spiritual practice.
"7. I am obligated to work constructively and peacefully at building the future I want for myself. This means that, in addition to items 1-6 above, I must spend some time each day developing my skill set and my portfolio, visualizing the kind of job I want when I depart, searching the Chronicle or other job source to familiarize myself with current job profiles, revisiting and polishing written pieces that I might send out to specific academic targets, and so on."
A life spent engaging in some healthy combination of the above 7 activities would be a good life, and a full-time job. Print 'em out and stick 'em on the damned wall!
You're Not Alone
From From Our Voices: Art Educators and Artists Speak Out About Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgednered Issues:
This quote is from the essay "The Illusion Was to Think She Had Any Control Over Her Life" by Deborah L. Smith-Shank
"Trauma can also be caused by exclusion. We have all heard the stories of ancient times when banishment was an ultimate punishment...it is a trauma of omission. Adrienne Rich articulated this experience and brought it into a postmodern context: 'whatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else, made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under inadequate or lying language, this will become, not merely unspoken but unspeakable" (Smith-Shank,144).
I have not had a chance to listen to Brownbird today. It's been largely busy--one thing after the other, and I have been so absorbed in writing that music has become a distraction. I went to 10,000 Villages, hosted by Covenant Presbyterian Church, this morning with my mom and Micaela and bought a few items. With the exception of food and books, I have trouble buying "things." I can always think of several reasons why I don't need it. But I really wanted to support 10,000 villages, the church, and the people who made the crafts, so trying not to think, I went and grabbed a Bangladesh prayer flag. It just occurred to me where Bangladesh is and that makes me appreciate it a little more. I took a really amazing world geography class last semester and learned that Bangladesh used to be a part of Pakistan because the British thought it would be a good idea to polarize the Hindus and the Muslims further, so India became a Hindu state and West (Pakistan today) and East Pakistan (Bangladesh today) became a Muslim state.
After 10,000 villages, I tried to write an essay until Jesse's AMAZING guitar recital. His individual pieces were incredible and engaging. After he finished, four other guitar players joined him and the music they played was powerful. Glen and Tracey began to teach me mandolin last night and I have a new appreciation for strings, fret, and finger position. To diverge, I really like guitar and mandolin in that they remind me of playing piano. I like the idea of stretching and curving finger to produce the sound--not breathing and reeds as it is with oboe.
I feel like I can flow with the music better when I play with my fingers and not my air.
Where does dancing fit in then?
But coming back to the essay...I would like to post it here when it is finished. It is my essay about Austin and I hesitate because it is creative non-fiction, and the blog is available to the internet.
But I finished the critical introduction today. I wrote it without an outline and watched in wonder as the ending to my introduction became the ending of my essay. I pieced together thoughts and ideas in places I hadn't originally intended and felt as if I was crafting, not writing, a story.
"You get one life and who wants to spend it at the wee hours of the morning, writing?"
-Janisse Ray
Wednesday Mornings
Some of the happiest moments of my life are in the morning, drinking earl gray or english breakfast tea, doing homework of some sort that involves writing, and listening to really good music. This morning the music is the pandora nickel creek station and some beirut, the tea is fair trade english breakfast, and the homework is a nearly completed essay on JM Coetzee and torture during the apartheid.
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