What to Wear When Failing

I realize that Jacksonville has a great artistic community…the only problem is that I am no part of it–or, at least, not a part of any group-ish community.  Then again, maybe I am too old.  I am fearful now that I belong to the same group as the “ex-hippie” that sits next to me every now and again.  He was discussing what he wanted to do with the book, Frankenstein, so, I offered up the absenth that has been yucking up our cabinet.  I figured it would lend his Frankenstein project a certain authenticity.  Also, I have been seeking a new home for it…unable to throw it out, as it was a gift, and it is the real stuff…  I know it will otherwise continue to collect dust in our cabinet; and, well, one just simply cannot have dusty green fairies laying about, and I do not know where else to send the vile vial.  Upon which, “Eh” (I will call him that because it lends a certain hippie-ish ennui), explained to me that he has been a recovering drug/alcohol-user for the last twenty some years.  To which, my response was falsified disbelief–”Really?  You’re kidding!”

I guess we all want to feel as though nobody can suss out who we are, and none of us wants to feel like a type…but, if ever there were a type, “Eh” is a straight shot at a former hippie/Kerouac-deifying, chemically diluted, wanderer.  I could have told him his own story, with most of the details, and in less than twenty minutes.  It made me feel rather badly for “Eh,” and for the next few days I was wondering if I am that quickly/easily discerned by others.  I think I am safe.  Usually, my expressions are random, meaningless, and too confusing for my own mind to dwell on…so, maybe it makes me a bit more difficult to pin down…  

Why did I bring up “Eh”?   Not entirely sure, other than I have reached a state of delusion and exhaustion that is totally impossible with the bottle, and rather requires a set of ill toddlers to accomplish. 

To further confuse, befuddle, and randomize my little episode here, I thought I would add that I am still not certain what I should wear to publicly humiliate myself in.  Heels?  Black skirt?  All black?   Speaking paralysis.  There should be PSAs about that.  Throw in some Plato, mix it up with Wallace Stevens, a little bit of De Saussure, and just enough William Carlos Williams to completely muck things up, and there’s my paper/speech.  Nobility created by a charioteer who drives two teams of horses, one real and the other imaginary.

Also, this week, I have to decide whether to discontinue the Suckmonkey, or to keep it running…   Tough decision.

Pru

History like Fire from a Busted Gun.

It is Easter, and all I can think of at the moment is AnnaKate’s “Easter Cheer.”  I don’t even know how to begin to describe it…other than, hilarious + disturbing = grotesque: two great tastes that go great together.  Yes, that, and “Shaved Ice”…  Because, the General is correct: “Nobody likes hairy ice.”

I admit, I am all over the place.  My mind is all over the place, like a poorly exploded, badly aimed missile.  I try to aim…but I end up in different directions simultaneously.  My aim for this afternoon was to get some research in…to work on some papers, like maybe the one I will be delivering in just a couple of weeks.  Obviously, I have missed my aim.  I don’t know how to make my brain behave better right now.  I might be whining…am I whining?  Liam has the “Man Cold“ now, so maybe I just need someone to walk around and whine to.  A toddler with the Man Cold is a terrible thing.

An essay of mine was mistakenly read, and another was purposefully read.  I don’t know which one made me feel smaller.  Not because anything terrible was said, but simply because they were read by people that I really admire.  Read and critiqued.  The critiques were not bad…nothing bad was said, but the idea that the essays are imperfect is really difficult to swallow, while at the same time, I knew exactly what the problems were with each one prior to the readings. 

I understand that I am the human equivalent of Swiss-cheese, when it comes to many things, but when flaws are pointed out, I get to beat myself up really nicely.  I think I would make a great Penitenté, well, an emotional one, not a physical one. 

What’s this nonsense?  Pru had learned to beat up others instead of herself…she was a word-bully.  One of the ”Mean Girls!”  Okay, we are going to start this over–after I load up on caffeine and Cadburry mini eggs, and re-situate my mind.  It just isn’t good to let an introvert alone for very long…bad, self-destructive things take up the mental space, and energy, that should rightfully be used to house outwardly destructive, caustic, stuff.

Pru

Like an Arrow-Shower…

Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain –Philip Larkin.

As an undergraduate, I was introduced to Mr. Larkin, well, to his writing and a hopeful, though false, idea(l) of who I wanted him to be and how I wished him to change my life.  I was introduced, by one of my favorite professors, to this line in particular.  I understand that I over-use it, that I apply it too liberally.

Some terribly sad things have happened to those close to me, and I didn’t know it for several days.  Now, I feel like a bigger heel than ever before.  I like to think that words are what keep us alive when we are experiencing a death of any sort.  I have been trying to extract feeling and create something beautiful out of-  But it isn’t coming so easily.  This is Dexter’s and Mongo’s pain though, and not mine. 

I am afraid to call, because I have no idea what to say.  What can a spoken word do, if it won’t reach the tongue?  Won’t make that final leap into existence?  No spark is created, no comfort felt.  I sit here alone, at the computer, when I should call.  My mind starts and then terminates at the Arrow-shower.  I use it a great deal, because I wish to imagine myself the granddaughter of Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis, sitting with them and listening to their melodic voices, their experience, and their kindness.  I wish that for Dexter too.  The kindness from the mouths of men that can be gentle and kind, because no matter how or what I say, and no matter how exceedingly sexist it sounds, there is comfort in the deep, soothing notes of a wise, caring, grandfather, who will put his arms around you, wipe away the tears, and squeeze the sad out of you.  A masculine figure that allows transcendence and safety from the otherwise sinking feeling one gets from the baser sort of male. 

Is that all I can offer as comfort?  A fictitious character that I have engineered from my comforting masculine authors and poets that cannot be what I wish them to be, and indeed were not?  A written something, and no voice?  The problem is that my voice cracks under the weight, and it squeaks its way out in a gnarled collection of disjointed fits and phrases.  It’s this problem of forgetting, where I forget the real people behind the words that I cherish so dearly, and in turn, I see myself far too clearly behind my own lacking imitations. 

I am so sorry, Dexter, if you are reading this.  I don’t know what else to offer, but my oft-used, regeneration of Mr. Larkin’s sentiments.  

We are always at a beginning.  I will overcome my phobia of the phone/of speaking.

Pru

New Haircut

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The scissors were flyin’ and the hair was too! 

Yowza, it feels good not to have all of that hair weighing me down.

I was trying to attempt something edgy, but did I end up with more of a soccer-mom/news anchor look instead?

Eep…I think you can see my crow’s-feet here.

 

Crowded House

Okay, I have to admit, it took me a while to realize that I should categorize the ramblings, so friends, family, spammers, and myself can look back to the posts and quickly figure out if there might be anything that sounds intriguing enough to scan.

That isn’t the least of the cues as to my mind’s slowness.  Secondly, I was recalling today that several people have asked us if we know that Neil Finn (of Crowded House) named his son Liam Finn, and that he is also a musician.  Oh, man.  I wish I had thought of that before today.  If I had, I would have been able to tell those several people, “yeah, that’s why we named them, ‘Liam,’ and ‘Finn,’ you know, it’s going to be a ‘Crowded House!’” (followed, of course, by uncontrollable giggles–well, my giggles, anyway).  I don’t think it’s nearly as funny as my “pasteurized milk” joke, but it works. 

Did I mention that we were going to see They Might Be Giants tonight?  We were…and then Sam (nanny) (I like referring to her as such, because it sounds way more pretentious than the four hours a week she works for me) decided to have surgery today. 

Oh, I didn’t tell anyone about Sam?  Well, that’s because you can’t have her anyway.  We won’t share.  She’s fabulous, and we are keeping her until she refuses to come back…ooooh…maybe her excuse is but a cloak for her to disappear behind; a nicer way to ease me into the idea that she doesn’t want to return.  Well, for right now (or the last few months) it gives me the hours that I am so grateful for.  I sit back here in my office, and I can hear my little goblins laughing/singing/playing away.

The boys got their first taste of other children (literally, for Finn), last week.  I started back at the gym (WHEEEEE!), so they officially started their first daycare, I guess.  Finn, of course, is quick to find anything on the floor and stick it in his mouth as a sort of chewing-gum.  He doesn’t swallow these things, just rolls them around.  So, I did a visual scouring of the floor, and found several staples, some unraveling carpet, and some stains that I don’t even want to think about.  

They seemed to take to it right away.  They really like it when there are more than two arms for them.  They get a little giddy at the idea that they can each have singular attention without knocking the other guy’s block off.  I wish I had just stayed and watched for a while.  It would have been fun to see them interact with children other than the screaming olive (from whom, I am convinced, Liam learned the brain-freeze screech). 

So, while I should be at a rollicking good TMBG concert, I am here.  Writing a post…and procrastinating (what’s new) about looking through essays and editing them.  It has been a really rough couple of days, and my mind has been doing some kind of stuttering spirally thing into a nice depression/angst/disgust about my writing.  So, I wasn’t going to enter a paper in the graduate conference, but then lovely Sally called, and talked me into it.  So, Prucilla, with a paper, of her own, up in front of other people….get ready. 

The last time I did something like this it was for an organized nerd activity that I don’t like to talk about.  Heck, I don’t much like to think about it.  Maybe I have ill memories of it because it made me feel like I wasn’t nerd enough to perform.  Well, we shall see.  Right now, the most important thing on my mind is: what shall I wear to stumble over and fall into my words in?

I foresee many a sleepless night over the next couple of weeks.

Lovely night to all,

Pru

Percy “Bitch” Shelley, and the Treatise Against Homeschooling

In a former life, I worked on a Republican campaign…don’t ask.  It was horrible.  It did open my eyes to the fact that any politician is just as bad as the next.  That’s why the Spitzer sex-scandal isn’t all that bad.  He’s still a stinky politician, and ego is why any of them are running for office.  Human beings are crappy animals, not nearly “The cleverest of all animals” as the book my grandmother gave my children states.  A greedy human being?!  What?!  A greedy, sex-crazed politician/business-man?!  What?!

So, back to the story.  While working on the campaign I met many a home-schooled child/aid/volunteer…  They seemed to be breeding out of control, and for the purpose of populating the earth with falsehoods and crazed ideas about the bible, history, Native Americans, and most of all, themselves.  On the whole, they all thought they were normal, and one child even told me, “We aren’t weird like Mormons or anything, we are Catholic.”  Really?  To be one of ten children and home-schooled by less than educated parents/teachers is normal?  The Catholics have just added to the “Seven Deadlies” things which fit perfectly fine under the existing seven….And the Mormons are weird, huh?  This child was also a frequent “Pageant” entrant, which was how she made all the extra coin to attend the community college.  Morals, huh?  Sounds like exactly the same rationalization a stripper gives for “paying for college.” 

Having twins, I suppose I am regarded as one of those ”super-breeders,” and hence the reasoning for the phenomenon of those who gawk rather than hold doors open, when I try to go gain entrance through said doors.  Maybe we are offensive, but at least I have two more little beings to warp towards my sensibilities.  It won’t make a dent in the tens of kids coming out of the Heritage Foundation brand of home-schooling families, but at least we are putting in our two kids worth.

Johnny Depp is the only actor fit to play Victor Frankenstein (yes, yes, roll in ze hay, make your jokes).  The character is laughably inept, egotistically driven, and unconscious of anyone else, and it would be the perfect chance for him to portray Percy Bysshe Shelley as the sniveling, dramatic, dandy, hypochondriac. 

As Victor Frankenstein/Percy whines, runs around, creates havoc, runs away, takes no responsibility, he, is the prime example of what can come of home/self schooling.  It seems to me, a good idea to have a large and widely varied body of people guiding the studies of youngsters.  The promotion of ignorance comes at a very early age.  Earlier than I ever would have thought possible.  To write a book for toddlers that says, “humans are the cleverest of all animals,” is patently and aggressively appealing to, and teaching, stupidity. 

Disney has long been my nemesis, and now, it is on!  They are one of the finest purveyors of stupid that I know of.  My grandmother is benevolent even in her malevolence, and she sends boxes full of books to the boys…some of which they promptly eat, or just destroy.  The board-books that remain are from “Disney,” though Disney may want to check that the literature is their own…just to make sure China doesn’t have its own separate agenda…which, who am I kidding, I am certain it does.  Why else would America be full of cheap plastic crap?

I hope, earnestly so, that there are more parents than just the great ones that I know, who actively engage in what their children are learning.  When all is said and done, the angrier I am at what I find in my children’s faces as it lurches towards their minds through their eyeballs, ears, or mouths, the more I am inclined to expose them to, just so I can ask them what they think, and then explain what I think. 

It isn’t the exposure to bad education that is the problem, it is the lack of exposure to things and the lack of follow-up from parents/adults/educators.  It is the one-sided education that is problematic.  After all, how can we expect our kids to be capable of critical thought if they only see exactly and only what we want them to see?

Kind of a mishmash of thoughts today, sorry.

Lovely week to all,

Prucilla