tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-126589302024-03-07T16:31:58.973-07:00Windmill WatchingSWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.comBlogger1317125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-86860126307680171352024-01-02T13:29:00.000-07:002024-01-02T13:29:03.439-07:00Dr. Frizzle Does Not Have a Pipe: Teaching Philosophy<p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">When I learned about the concept of Foucault’s pipe, it was at a religious university that
was so opposed to any form of smoking, we could not even talk about it in the classroom. So
instead of showing us the classic, “This is not a pipe,” picture, the professor put up a picture of a
chair and asked us: is this a chair?</span></p><div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">I was so annoyed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Of course it was a chair.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">I don’t know if he was wearing a bow tie, but he was definitely the sort of man who </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPS'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;">would </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">wear a bow tie. Probably with brightly colored glasses that changed from day to day to
match his bow tie. He asked us to raise our hands if it was a chair and I </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPS'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;">knew </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">this was a trick of
some kind, but </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPS'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;">it was a chair. </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">So I raised my hand.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">He smiled in that way that let me know I had done exactly what he wanted me to, and he
said to me, “So, it’s a chair?”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">“Of course it’s a chair,” I said. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">“Okay. Come up here,” he said. “Come sit in it.” </span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">I definitely did not stand up and try to sit in it. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Because the </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPS'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;">most </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">annoying thing about Foucault’s pipe/chair, is that it is not actually a pipe and it’s not actually a chair: it’s a </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPS'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;">picture </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">of a pipe, a </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPS'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;">picture </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">of a chair. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">I hate this.
</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Why do I tell you this story even though I hate it?
</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">It’s not </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPS'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;">just </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">because they sent me to a “how to torture students and be wicked” class
before they let me become a professor. (Although, yeah, they totally did that.) It’s because even
though it gives me rage, the whole picture/story/thing (and I really hate to say this) it makes a
good point.
</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">In all rhetorical modes, there’s the subject (the chair) and then there’s the medium (the
picture). And if the artist/photographer/writer/creator has done a good job, you don’t even </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPS'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;">think </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">about the medium part. You’re fully immersed in the </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPS'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;">subject.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">The medium is invisible.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">This is more true in writing than almost any other place.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Writing has a magic to it. And I say that not just because Twitter thinks I’m a bog witch, but because I believe it. Writing has a magic that extends beyond its ability to be invisible.
Writing is the place where any and all subjects meet. You can write about fairy princesses, and
you can write about particle physics. You can write about both at the same time! And when </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">you’re done, what do you have? You have thoughts on science, thoughts on princesses, stories,
theories, logic, fantasy, almost literally anything in the world.
</span>
</p></div></div><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Also, you have </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPS'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;">writing</span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">People hardly ever think about the invisible medium—that it’s </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPS'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;">writing </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">they’re reading.
But it </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPS'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;">is </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">writing. And the fact that the very </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPS'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;">best </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">writing is almost always invisible is precisely
why we need to study it.
</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">So how do you study the invisible medium?
</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">How do you teach people to do something that, when successful, draws absolutely no
attention to itself at all?
</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Personally, I turn to the absolute master of pedagogy: Ms. Frizzle.
</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Ms. Frizzle wears loud dresses covered with stars or plants or planets. She has a pet
lizard, drives a magic school bus, and is canonically gay. She gives students so much freedom
and agency, and she approaches learning with something deeply important to me: joy. One of her
creators, Bruce Degan, says that her magic is that she can take “even the boring-est, unsexiest
topic,” and turn it “into a crazy adventure.”</span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 8.000000pt; vertical-align: 4.000000pt;">1
</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Her trademark phrase is “take chances, make mistakes, and get messy.”
</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Writing well relies on our willingness to do this: to take chances, to make mistakes, to get
messy. Audiences are dynamic and there is never a consistent set of rules that will be applicable
for every audience, for every occasion, for every purpose, throughout all time.
</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Revision is where the core of writing success lies. Being able to re-see, re-think, re-write.
And when you allow yourself the room to make mistakes, to be messy, and to do it </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPS'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;">joyfully, </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">you
are so much better situated to develop the long-term writing skills you need to effectively learn
to communicate.
</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">I believe in creating a classroom environment that is joyful, where the stakes are low
enough that students will take chances, where the curriculum is iterative enough they will keep
going back again and again until what they’ve created </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPS'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;">works—</span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">until the writing becomes
invisible</span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPS'; font-size: 12.000000pt; font-style: italic;">.
</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;">Ms. Frizzle does not smoke pipes, and neither do I, but both of us believe giving
students the tools they need to successfully develop the skills that are so important starts with
developing a love for and a joy in the process, itself. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 12.000000pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFU-UdiwHMU2-7ooDPru1rXsWaWLrqsmPDa5ZDSAO-NoICuYorQ8g0J5fROUyx4ZmJN3AGjSFqg0rYhgPhi40lHUu4XFfpWdDtjvjMHlNl8TKTixZAsZ5qOWPneVBdcF5Uqlggjr9gPDhvpqFDgs-od27bVUzaMwyRaDmmxAGVO0k1GaUqlu3m/s917/msfrizzle2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="650" data-original-width="917" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFU-UdiwHMU2-7ooDPru1rXsWaWLrqsmPDa5ZDSAO-NoICuYorQ8g0J5fROUyx4ZmJN3AGjSFqg0rYhgPhi40lHUu4XFfpWdDtjvjMHlNl8TKTixZAsZ5qOWPneVBdcF5Uqlggjr9gPDhvpqFDgs-od27bVUzaMwyRaDmmxAGVO0k1GaUqlu3m/s320/msfrizzle2.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <p></p>
<p><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 8.000000pt; vertical-align: 4.000000pt;">1 </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">Lauren Mechling, “This School Year, Unleash Your Inner Ms. Frizzle,” </span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPS'; font-size: 10.000000pt; font-style: italic;">The New York Times</span><span style="font-family: 'TimesNewRomanPSMT'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">, Aug 31, 2020.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/31/parenting/ms-frizzle-magic-schoolbus-teaching.html
</span></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-6347936786530540282022-04-08T10:35:00.002-06:002022-04-08T11:03:24.823-06:00Who Peeks Through the Veil<br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">They come to me in a dream.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It’s one of those dreams you’d
expect to hear about in church—the kind of dream for which rationality demands
dismissal while irrationality demands attention. The problem is you’re not sure
what to pay attention to and you’re not sure what to dismiss. And yet, you
can’t forget about it. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Right before the dream, I am
stumbling into my professor’s office, collapsing into a self-pitying heap. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Oh, honey,” my professor, Zina,
says. “You look like you need chocolate.” She sifts through her desk drawers
and pulls out a Snickers bar and tosses it to me. “I’m sorry about the
scholarship.” She pauses, as if she wants to say or do something else. “I have
to teach a class. But I’ll be back. Take a nap and wait for me if you want. You
look tired.” She points to the lounge-like chair she keeps in her
office—specifically for naps—and leaves.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I am tired.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My exhausted, twenty-year-old self
must be a mess. Eyes all puffed and red. Un-washed hair frizzing. Shoulders
sagged by the git-like crying I have done about my own failures. All I can
think about is that I’ve lost the Rhodes scholarship and will, consequently,
never go to England. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And going to England feels so much
more important than it seems like it should. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As I sit in the nap-chair, I try to
push all my self-pity into each bite of chocolate. But as I eat, I keep hearing
the judges’ gritty questions. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Don’t you feel a little naïve for
having faith?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Missionary work is a form of
imperialism. And imperialism is one of the greatest atrocities of the modern
era. How do you feel about being part of the atrocity?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You’ve read Chaucer. You’ve read
the ‘Wheel of Fortune.’ What makes you think it’s spun by <i>God</i>? How do
you tell the difference between divinity and sheer chance?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It was an unexpected line of
questioning—one I felt completely unprepared for. I had been convinced that,
irrational as I knew it was, my competing was of <i>vital, </i>eternity-laden
importance. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So, I answered the best I could. And
I thought I felt a <i>power </i>there with me as I was talking. I thought I saw
one of the judges cry. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And then I lost. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I stood with the eleven finalists,
waiting for the results. We’d all made it past state finals. This was the last
level of the competition: four of us would go to Oxford. We were in the lobby
of a Texas hospital where one of the judges was a doctor. Poorly-clad patients
in wheelchairs, IVs attached to the handlebars, kept rolling by. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When the judges came out of their
deliberation in the conference room, I knew it wasn’t a good sign that they
wouldn’t look at me. But I was still unprepared for the empty place in my chest
when they didn’t call my name. Why had it felt <i>so important </i>to come
here? To <i>lose</i>? It didn’t make sense. And it kept not making sense even
when I was back. Even when Steve—who I’d met at state finals—emailed me to ask
me on a date. And especially when I knocked on Zina’s door and when she handed
me the chocolate. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But at least when the last of the
chocolate melts against my fingers, I feel some of my self-pity melt along with
it. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Completely spent, I decide to try
that nap. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Generally speaking, I don’t sleep
very well. Especially during the day. But I drift quickly into a haze. And
suddenly, everything around me is calm and fuzzy with light. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’m dreaming. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There’s someone standing in front of
me. He’s young and old in an ageless way. He’s got blonde hair and he looks
like my dad. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I tilt my head to the side—silently
asking him why he’s standing there.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He looks at me right in the face and
he says, “You have to find us.” There’s an urgency in his voice and he doesn’t
blink. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I look down to his left and notice a
girl is sitting there next to him. Her hair is darker than his and she doesn’t
say anything. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“But where are you?” I ask. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There’s a beat of silence before he
answers. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“England,” he says.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And the dream is over. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve
been taught about dreams. About Lehi, dreaming of the Tree of Life. Joseph,
interpreting the dream of the baker and the king. Joseph Smith listening to
angels who spoke as he lay covered by his bed-quilts. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A lot of what I’d heard came from my
grandmother. She lived with us when she had congestive heart failure and, even
though she did eventually recover, at the time we all thought she was dying.
She couldn’t lie flat and breathe, so she’d sit upright in a chaise—a crocheted
blanket covering her newly thin legs (that she claimed she was far too old to
shave).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Terrified she might die any minute,
I would sit next to her every night until two or three in the morning. She’d
hold my hand and tell me about my uncle who had visions. Her friend who heard
voices. The way the ghost of her ancestors would speak to her and night when
she was most afraid. The prophets of the Bible must have seemed maniacal, she’d
said. But would be a little crazy, too, if I could see through the veil.
Glimpses through the veil can terrify you with their violence. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You need to remember,” she said to
me once, “when the veil between the worlds is open… it’s dangerous. Spirits
flow both ways: life meeting death. If you’re not careful, you could fall back
through.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If I had been older, or more
cynical, maybe I would have rolled my eyes. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But I wasn’t old, and I wasn’t (yet)
cynical. All I knew was the clocks in the room seemed to whirl their arms
around too fast. And that every minute, every second, I could spend with my
grandmother was terribly important. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So when I have the dream… when I
feel how <i>important </i>it seems… it’s not terribly hard to ignore every bit
of my rational self. Dreams <i>can </i>matter, I decide. Especially when they <i>seem
</i>like they matter. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But there is still something so
baffling about it all. The urgency—the pleading. The call to a quest. The best
I can figure is the people in my dream are ancestors. And ancestors <i>are </i>important,
I think. That’s why we’re sealed—one generation to the next—in a line back
through time and forward into an eternal round. Our connection to both the
people before us and the people who come after us is sacred. Maybe, I figure,
maybe I’ll still get to England. Because my ancestors are calling me to find
them. The spirit of Elijah finally speaking to me the way my grandmother said
it might someday. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“How are you doing?” Zina asks when
she comes back from teaching.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Good,” I say. But even though I
try, I can’t elaborate any more than that. It all feels too important somehow.
Even the nap-chair and chocolate have started to feel like holy space and
sacred communion. “The chocolate was magical.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When I go home, I sit on my
twin-sized bed—surrounded, as it is, by piles and books and notepads full of my
scratchings. I watch the curtain to my bedroom window blow in and out, as if
it’s breathing. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The last time my curtain breathed
that way was on the morning I decided to apply for the Rhodes scholarship. I
had been eating oatmeal and when the urge hit, I called it the ghost of Cecil
Rhodes calling. But it was just a feeling. If I’d had another grandmother, I
might have called it something besides a ghost. The only other sources of the
feeling I could think of were God and the devil. I did not want God to tell me
to do something so annoying. And the devil seemed an unlikely visitor at dawn,
when I was eating oatmeal. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Today I hold a notebook in my lap,
wanting to write the dream about my ancestors down. But I can’t even do that.
The words don’t come because every time I think of them, they’re pushed out of
my head by waves of calm. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It’s six years before I can write it
down. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And it’s three years before it ever
occurs to me the messengers of my dream could be anything other than ancestors.
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Because it’s not until three years
later—when I am married to Steve, who I met competing for that Rhodes
scholarship—that I find out we can’t have babies. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And it’s not until the same three
years later that a professor—who is practically a stranger to me—walks up and
asks me to come teach a study abroad class with him. It’s a hiking trip, he
says. More than two hundred miles over seven mountains. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And it’s in England. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"> •</span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif; mso-no-proof: yes;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We’re en-route to Milton Abbey,
hiking through a muddy forest. The light is dim—twilight in the midday. There
is no sign there might be wild animals, but the thick trees that surround the
footpath are the kind you’d expect to look into and see multitudes of glowing
eyes looking back. Ancient England had lions, but today is the first time I really
believe in them. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My feet are leaden with mud, and I
am so exhausted I feel almost as if my spirit isn’t fully connected to my body.
It’s hovering just outside the space of my body, connected only to my toes. I’m
embarrassed to be so exhausted. Embarrassed the injections have made everything
so dark and fuzzy feeling. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I should be <i>grateful</i>, I
think. Here, in England, IVF is so much less expensive than it is at home that
even we—on our grad-student budget—can afford it. This is our only shot at
having a baby for years. The only shot at making that dream I had unfold. The
fact I have to hike two hundred miles on IVF hormone injections shouldn’t be an
undue sacrifice. Even though my reaction to the hormones has been… extreme.
I’ve been seeing things, hearing things. At night I dream of dismembered body
parts and demons who eat the rancid carcasses of cats. When I wake up in the
morning, I can almost feel fur caught between my teeth. My head will pound, I
will vomit, and then I’ll start to cry. I keep a record of it all for the
clinic. They have never had a patient as young as I am, they tell me. They
don’t know what will happen. “None of this is <i>normal,</i>” they tell me.
“But it isn’t <i>abnormal</i> either. Sometimes people experience homicidal
urges. Sometimes they get violent. The injections are literally changing the
function of your brain. No one really knows what is going to happen when you
start interfering with a person’s brain.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But is it really the injections
making me feel this way?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The emotions feel real. The
disorientation and darkness feel real. Every bit of anxiousness has a <i>real </i>cause.
Can I blame drugs for that?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I try to keep my eyes wide open, and
a smile pasted on my face. But the view ahead is obscured by a misty haze and
the squishy path underneath our feet punctuated by sharp rocks you can’t always
see. I’m not hiding much of anything very well. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I slow my pace and look around. The
trees are tall. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And then my spirit, still hovering
in front of me, looks at me. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Someday you’ll be rich,” she says. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I have never cared about being rich.
But in that moment—surreal as it is with the living shadows of trees
hovering—it seems like a really, really wonderful idea. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There are two people nearby talking
about their boyfriends. They must know I can hear them, but I’m not sure if I’m
supposed to pretend I can’t or if I’m supposed to join the conversation. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The spirit who looks like me speaks
again. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“And when you’re rich, people will <i>want
</i>to hear you speak. They’ll cry and applaud and the very sound of your
voice.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The connection between me and my
spirit loosens. It’s elastic now and stretching away from me. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Steve is far ahead of me, smiling,
as he talks to someone in the group. I think, “He is such a good guy.” A bird
squawks above me. I look up at it. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The spirit who looks like me says,
“He’ll probably be an apostle someday. You’ll have to travel the entire globe
and everywhere you go people will fawn.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Someone in the line of hikers bumps
into me, and I let myself fall farther back in line.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Says the spirit, “When you’re rich
and powerful no one will bump into you. Or if they do, they’ll be sorry.
They’ll rue the day they bumped into you.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My guts start filling with… a
yearning. It’s a completely unfamiliar sensation. A mix of greed and bloodlust.
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You can make it happen you know.
It’s easy. Watch.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the sky in front of me, I see a
cliff. I see the cliff and I see the person who just bumped into me. I see them
falling down the cliff and then I see myself. Pushing arms out. Standing at the
edge of the cliff. Smiling. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I stop.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The hikers keep moving forward, like
a moving body of water. I look around, trying desperately to snap my spirit
back into my body, but I can’t. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Who are you?” I ask the spirit.
“Because you are <i>not </i>me.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She smiles once more, fading into
the shadows of the trees.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I quicken my pace and try to find
someone to talk to, to pull myself out of the fogginess of my IVF addled brain.
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>For a while, I almost feel like
myself again. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When we get to the Abbey, Steve
hands me a pamphlet about its founder—King Athelstan. He was king a long, long
time ago—somewhere around 900 AD. I read the pamphlet with a tired sort of
disinterestedness. I’m hot and cold and the same time and so exhausted I
approach the grandeur of the Abbey with something like boredom.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I leave my heavy-with-mud shoes at
the entrance and walk around in my wet wool socks. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">A tour guide is talking. “He used to
walk in those hills,” I hear him say. I assume he is talking about Athelstan,
but I am only vaguely listening. “He had visions of glory. He would do anything
for the glory. Some people think he killed his brother. The abbey is dedicated
to him.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">The Abbey looks like every other
cathedral we’ve been to so far. Ceilings so tall you feel like you’re outside
when you’re in. Stone walls that echo against a quiet so present it seems to
force reverence. Walls of graves etched with the names of noble patrons, whose
lifetime of money earned them a hollow carving in rock. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">I read through the pamphlet as I
walk—the cold, hard of the floor such a contrast to the muddy path. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">The pamphlet traces the bloody history
of the Abbey. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">It’s strange to read of ghosts who
might have walked the same path I just walked. I wonder how heavy with mud their
shoes were. How tired they were as they came out of the woods. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">The pamphlet moves from one owner to
the next, all of them merging together in my mind, into a singular king. A
singular entity. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">In the 18<sup>th</sup> century, a man
named Damer became obsessed with his status, and the abbey’s ability to boost
it. He thought the land should be grander. He had visions of himself as great.
The ghost of his dead wife haunted him. He was worthy of her. He was <i>better </i>than
her.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">And I saw it play out in his head, the
way I had watched myself. It was simple, he would have told himself, stomach
churning with something like greed and bloodlust. Just a few things to do
first. Watch. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">There is a bench next to me and I sit
down on it. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">I can still feel it in my gut, too—that
unfamiliar yearning. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">But he did more than just feel it. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">He was so swayed by his visions he went
to the town that stood at the edge of the forested hills. He razed it to the
ground. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">The entire village. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">In the space of the destruction, now
sits his glory. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">I feel cold as I put the pamphlet down.
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">I can almost see that spirit who looks
like me, laughing. A phantom haunting the very stones I sit on. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">I watch the other members of the group
move past me and am again struck by the sensation they are part of a moving
body of water while I am a rock, stuck in the mud of the riverbed. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">Could it be a real demon? I think. One
whispering temptations, driving you to sin, or maybe insanity?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">How large is the gap between sin and
insanity?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">I start to shiver. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">I can’t see Steve anywhere. But I think
I can hear him just outside the Abbey. I think I can hear the way his laugh is
so <i>present, </i>and I wonder if I’ll ever be so capable of being present
again. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">Is the veil between the worlds a mix of
molecules and neurons? When the clinic shut down my pituitary gland, did they
evacuate my brain of whatever chemical was keeping it closed? Are the hills of
Milton Abbey inhabited by a spirit who haunts kings and Kerrys? </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">I stand up and I walk from tomb to tomb
inside the Abbey, scanning the names of the dead. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">My wet, wool socks leave footprints
behind me as I go. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"> </span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">•</span><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It’s egg collection today. They gave
me a Valium this morning, but I don’t feel it working. Not even a little bit.
The room is hot, and I am half naked and shaking. The doctor is almost
unrecognizable in her surgery garb. She is covered from head to foot and is
wearing goggles. I can’t see her eyes. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>They give me something in an IV and
everything starts to get fuzzy fast. My legs are pried back (so dignified!).
Steve is holding my hand, all whispering and smiles. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When they asked me earlier how much
I weighed, I was embarrassed about how much weight the hormones made me gain.
So, I lied. By about thirty pounds. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It’s not until they use that weight
to start calculating my anesthesia that I realize you should never lie about
your weight to doctors who have to give you anesthesia. Especially if you’re a
redhead and you need more than other people do. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The next thing I remember is pain.
Screaming pain. Writhing pain. Tearing pain. Deep, penetrating pain. And a
fuzziness. I am here and there and nowhere all at once. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And then, in my mind, I am back at
Tintagel, where the sun beat down on at us when we scaled the cliffs. I can
feel the sun against my eyes, my head throbbing against its piercing. The sun
is blanching. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I think about the word “blanching”
and immediately my inner voice begins to recite Elizabeth Barret Browning’s
“Grief” in a nonstop loop as I kick at the dust of the cliffs. Intra-poem,
“Grief” morphs into John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud,” and then “Batter my
Heart.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Below I see the bright aqua of the
Atlantic Ocean, crashing on the shores next to Merlin’s cave. The air smells
like dust and salt. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I remember the way Steve meets me on
the top of the hill where, underneath our feet, lie the ruins of a castle
floor. He walks with me to find shade. I am beginning to stink with sweat and
my headache intensifies, shooting a stake through my pupil to the back of my
skull. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Steve kisses my cheek and puts a
“pregnant” flower into my hair. “It’s a magic flower,” he says, pointing to the
way the belly of the flower bulges. “The ancient veins of power pulse here with
the mystery of conception. All they need is an offering now.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You talked to George too long,” I
say. George, the bus driver, kept going on about the “veins of power”
underneath Tintagel Castle. I frown in the blanching sun, unable to smile at
Steve’s magic flower. My inner voice of Browning-Donne chanting grows louder
and louder, humming in a cacophony of grief, sin, and death. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We make our way, shoes in hand, down
into Merlin’s cave as the tide comes in. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You feel the power here, don’t
you?” asks Steve.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Cold waves crash, stinging against
my feet. The cold slowly creeps from the numbness of my toes to my torso, but
the ache in my head lingers and the stink of my sweat mingles with the crusty
smell of water and sand. “Yes,” I say. “I feel it.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I wade into the oncoming waves
inside the cave, pushing my sunglasses up into my hair to help adjust to the
darkness of it. I’m teetering on rocks as the swirl of the tide sends me off
balance. While I try to right myself, I do not notice my sunglasses have fallen
from my head and have been sucked into the swirling vortex of water and rock. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Back on the beach, after the tide
has pulled the cave opening almost completely underwater, I notice they are
gone.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i>The Tintagel Gods of conception
have taken their offering, </i>says the ghost of Cecil Rhodes, who is laughing.
<i>And fortunately, they have a taste for hideously ugly eyewear. </i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"> </span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I cry out, shake my head.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“No, Cecil Rhodes is not allowed to
be here,” I say.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Don’t worry,” says the doctor.
“Hallucinations are common with this type of anesthesia.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I lied about my weight,” I say.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>They don’t believe me. The nurse
strokes my arm. “Hush honey, it’s going to be okay.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The pain is making me sweat and it’s
a struggle not to scream out.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My memory is doing funny things </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In front of me, I see my thesis and
I see myself sitting over it, hunched with anxiety.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My advisor wants another draft. And
he wants it to be good.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I don’t care if it’s good. I just
want it <i>done. </i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But I know if it’s going to be good,
I’m going to have to consider the logical possibility there is no god.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The premise of my thesis is that
Enlightenment philosophers misinterpreted the physics of Newton’s <i>Principia.
</i>That the hypotheses upon which their atheistic philosophies rested were
laden with fallacies. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>You can’t write that kind of thesis
without considering the logical possibility there is no god. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I close my eyes. Take a breath. I’m
not entirely sure whether or not I’m about to talk myself out of my faith and
it terrifies me.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Axioms, I think.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If you follow them back far enough,
all logical conclusions are ultimately based on fundamentally unprovable
axioms.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Trace the logic back to the axioms.
What’s the axiomatic difference?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The pages of my thesis get caught in
the breeze of my swamp cooler, but I let them scatter.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Nothing.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Something.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I realize.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That’s the axiom.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There’s either <i>something. </i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></i><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">Or there’s <i>nothing. </i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></i><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">Neither one is provable. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Neither one is necessarily more
probable. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Both are the beginning of two very
different types of logic. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Logic, ultimately, is a question of
faith. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“My left ovary is a mess,” I say.
“Scar tissue. It burst a couple years ago. And I lied about my weight.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The nurse leans down harder on me
because I am writhing. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I repeat things without knowing that
I’m repeating them. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i>My left ovary.</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I lied.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I lied about my weight.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There’s scar tissue.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I lied about my weight. </span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></i><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">Every few minutes I see the doctor hand something to the
embryologist, who then runs into the lab next door. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“We’ve got another one,” I hear
coming from the other room. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If I could be just the tiniest bit
coherent, I might realize this is the moment of human conception: dreams
meeting reality inside a petri-dish. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Psalm 19.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’ve been having Steve read it to me
every night. I’m not entirely sure why, but it has resonated with me in a way
none of the other psalms have. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i>The heavens declare the glory of
God; And the firmament sheweth his handywork. </i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Day unto day uttereth speech, and
night unto night sheweth knowledge.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There is no speech, nor language,
where their voice isn’t heard.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Their line is gone out through all
the earth and their words to the end of the world. </span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In them hath he set a tabernacle for
the sun</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"> </span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></i><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">The sacredness of nature. The importance of words. How all
things testify of God.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I can feel myself shaking, feel the
nurse holding me down.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I start to cry. A deep moaning sob
that I could never have allowed myself if I weren’t drugged. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It was never Cecil Rhodes who sent
me to compete for those scholarships, I realize. Never Cecil Rhodes who sent me
on this trip. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It was always God.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I try not to writhe, try not to let
the pain get in the way of the collection.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Should we have faith in God? Or
faith God will do what we want?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I know the answer to this, and it
makes me feel desperate and angry. I don’t want to be told an empty uterus is
all part of God’s plan and I don’t want to be told that God <i>wants </i>me to
suffer. I want someone to tell me it will all work out. I don’t want anyone to
tell me it will be okay <i>even if it doesn’t work. </i>I want it to work.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I am not okay with failure. And it
makes me feel like a terribly selfish person.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"> </span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">•</span><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Now I lie on the edge of a London
gutter.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The air smells of dust, grime, and
cigarette smoke. Vaguely, I am aware of the filth that is coating my hair,
dirtying my clothes. But I can’t make myself care. Everything is hazy from the
egg-collection anesthesia and my stomach is aching. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Steve is knocking, trying to get the
property manager to open the door so we can check in and I can lie down on an
actual bed instead of a grimy gutter.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“We’re not open right now,” says
someone from inside. “Come back in an hour.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“But I told you we’d be coming,” says
Steve. And he did. He told them I’d be having surgery. That we needed to check
in right after it was finished.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“It’s lunchtime,” says the nasally
voice through the door. “Come back in an hour.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Steve looks at me, a little
desperately. I see the lines of anger, compassion, worry, all deepening as he
looks. “But my wife,” he says, “she’s not doing very well.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>His face is so kind. So <i>Steve. </i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></i><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">The voice from the other side of the door snaps, “A person
has to eat!”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And Steve steps away from the door,
fuming. He kneels down next to me, touches my hair. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’m aware that I <i>could </i>be
crying, but I am feeling so hazy I can’t tell whether or not I <i>am. </i>I
simply smell the dust, the cigarette smoke. I feel the pavement under my hips,
the total <i>dirtiness </i>that has accompanied this entire attempt at an,
ironically?, immaculate conception.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And then, there in the steamy London
gutter, I feel her next to me. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;">It is unalarming in a dream-like way.
And maybe I am dreaming. But when I think about it, she’s been watching me for
days. Watching me as the heat sets me snapping. Watching as I retched at the
toilet during <i>Les Misérables. </i>Watching as I cried when we rowed our way
across the lake at Hyde Park. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Today, when they took those eggs so
forcibly from my ovaries, they put them into a dish. There was no sex. No
meeting of two people in love. Just a violent attempt to force open the veil. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I look at her Madonna face. She
seems so young. So much younger than I would have ever imagined. How violent
was her immaculate conception? How hard was it to open the veil and let Jesus
through? </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Did you know?” I want to ask her.
“Your uncle talked about light and darkness and death when he heard. But did
you know he was talking about you? That you would have to go through something
even Joseph, sweet as he was, could <i>never </i>understand?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I close my eyes, listening to the
hum of traffic as it is filtered by the concrete. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I don’t know yet that this procedure
is going to bring me those children I dreamed of. But I do know things I
didn’t. That conception, no matter how miraculous, brings you directly through
the shadow of death. That God <i>meant </i>it when he told Eve she would have
sorrow in childbirth.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And that even <i>she</i>, mother of
God, was a daughter of Eve.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I watch the black taxis whiz past, stirring
up black fumes. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She reaches out, holds my hand. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She puts a hand on my ankle. “The
thing about immaculate conceptions,” she says, just a hint of laughter
underneath the softness of her voice. “They just never let you in the inn
afterward.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And, for just a moment, I forget
about the pain. I forget about the grime and the ache in my stomach. The entire
<i>dirtiness </i>that has accompanied this possibly futile attempt at an
immaculate conception. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I just stare at the open veil. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And I laugh right along with her. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "Baskerville",serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBEE4OGuOWZDh8EcYbsWE2VAwgslc4TkfGTzO_CwBbHZJnsxOGBGsjmUDOQeYLHhWg6nbNH1LGuvyANmwN1FxYgAA-zngo8PFDI1MefROUlJFzga6n6cqf_-HR-u6bhwvXwZZ7bNdNkXSYAzqrb_N0upS29_V_nN9l4QHxqVJmUyBRtrEb2A/s991/Celtic-Tree-of-Life-Symbol-Meaning-and-Symbolism.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="858" data-original-width="991" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBEE4OGuOWZDh8EcYbsWE2VAwgslc4TkfGTzO_CwBbHZJnsxOGBGsjmUDOQeYLHhWg6nbNH1LGuvyANmwN1FxYgAA-zngo8PFDI1MefROUlJFzga6n6cqf_-HR-u6bhwvXwZZ7bNdNkXSYAzqrb_N0upS29_V_nN9l4QHxqVJmUyBRtrEb2A/s320/Celtic-Tree-of-Life-Symbol-Meaning-and-Symbolism.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <p></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-75854250967657243602018-06-24T04:28:00.000-06:002018-06-24T04:28:17.191-06:00A poem for Iseult of the White Hands<span style="color: #454545; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 19px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">True Love is no great thing </span><br />
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 19px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
It is more the wordless gift of a Diet Coke on your bedstand </div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 19px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
(Because I just thought you would want it later)</div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 19px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
than it is an epic story of heartbreak and longing</div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 19px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
It is the hypnagogic kiss, sleepily left on your shoulder, every night,</div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 19px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
not an ecstasy of moonlight and song</div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 19px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
Tristan had it wrong</div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 19px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
Love is not a poison to consume </div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 19px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
It is white hands reaching to steady you</div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 19px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
when you've forgotten to steady yourself</div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 19px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
It is a thousand tiny moments </div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 19px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
the assuring presence </div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 19px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
of someone who would never </div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 19px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
leave you to hurt alone</div>
<div style="color: #454545; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 19px; text-decoration: -webkit-letterpress;">
<br /></div>
SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-39398411479861061372018-03-07T13:14:00.001-07:002018-03-14T06:43:26.540-06:00There is No Drama Like Closeted Gay Mormon Drama: A Review of Autoboyography, by Christina Lauren<style>
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</style>I am a Mormon from pioneer stock. My ancestors crossed the
plains with oxen and handcarts, I am Mormon in my ontology, my culture, my
history, my assumptions and my worldview.
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am also queer. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Both my Mormonism and my queerness are integral aspects of
my identity, one as equally changeable as the other. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Because of this, I am both the best and the worst person to
review this book. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Autoboyography</i>, by
Christina Lauren, is the story of Tanner and Sebastian. Tanner, a bisexual
non-Mormon newly closeted by the ultra-conservative culture of Provo, UT, falls
in love with Sebastian, the gay, closeted even to himself, son of a Mormon
bishop.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sebastian, like me, is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mormon</i>.
It is ingrained in the way he thinks, the way he responds, the ways he learns
to smile to cover his feelings and the way he shuts down or runs away from
something he has been conditioned to reject about himself. “Sebastian’s
identity isn’t queer,” says Tanner. “It’s not gay. It’s not even soccer player
or boyfriend or son. It’s Mormon.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That rang true. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A lot of this book rang true to me. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A lot of this book made me want to apologize to every person
who has ever had to date me. (I am so sorry, y’all. Queer Mormons are an
exhausting mess.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I lost count of the number of the times I wanted to scream
and throw my phone (I read this book on my phone) because it had hit a nerve
I’d forgotten about. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I could only finish it in the arms of my partner. She held
me while I read the last few chapters. I was shaking. She has learned to
recognize when I am having Mormon-related trauma. She can see it on my face,
often speaking it before I even realize I’m experiencing it. Sometimes
she whispers, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fuck the Mormons. </i>Sometimes
she whispers, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">You’re beautiful just the
way you are. </i>Most of the time she just holds me.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I imagine someone who isn’t Mormon, particularly someone who
isn’t queer, would respond with skepticism to certain parts of this book. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But this book got so much right. And even some of the parts
it got wrong? They are important—integral to the purpose and impact of the
book. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Things the book got
right:</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">1) The
description of BYU.</i> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Tanner says BYU is “a lot of long skirts and modest shirts,
straight trimmed hair and genuine smiles.” He is dumfounded when someone
playing Frisbee actually says, “Gosh darn it!” And then says “BYU is exactly
like I imagined.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I mean. I laughed. So hard.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i><br />
<br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2) When Sebastian says
he’s not gay. </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How can someone admit to being exclusively interested in
boys, but not, as Sebastian says, “Not… <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i>?”<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In Mormonism, there is no room for homosexuality in the Plan
of Salvation. The highest order of the priesthood, the highest order of
salvation, is in heterosexual marriage—the “sealing” for eternity that is meant
to provide the template for this life and the next. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While having feelings for the “wrong” gender isn’t overtly
considered a sin (don’t get me started on the subtext), “acting on them” is
considered one of the gravest sins. The church discipline for being in an
active same-sex relationship is the same as it is for attempted murder.
Entering a same-sex marriage is considered the highest apostasy, and triggers
mandatory excommunication. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have known since I was a teenage student at BYU that I had
an annoying habit of falling in love with women. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It wasn’t until I was in my thirties I was even willing to
speak a name to it.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i><br />
<br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">3) Sebastian’s angst.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Maybe people will find Sebastian’s angst unbelievable. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If anything, I think he didn’t have enough of it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He was able to speak it, out loud, to Tanner. Even as he
said he’d never said it out loud before. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was only a few years ago I spoke it out loud. I sat in
the passenger seat of my friend’s car. We drove out to Utah Lake. It was
frozen, a mix of white and brown and grey. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had been trying to say the words for hours and I hadn’t
been able to. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My friend had been teasing me. “It can’t be that bad,” she
said. “Did you drink coffee? Did you get drunk? Do you want to have an affair?
Please tell me you’re thinking of having an affair, monogamy is so boring.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I laughed. She was joking (I think). She was a teenager when
she was married, only a little younger than I was when I married my husband. We
were, all of us, virgins on our respective wedding days. (I had never even been
to second base.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finally I said, “If I did have an affair… It … would be…
with a woman.” It felt like I was spitting the words, trying to get them out. I
thought I might choke on them. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had never said it out loud. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had fallen in love with woman after woman after woman. And
it had never occurred to me to give it a name. I knew it was something you
buried. It was something you kept quiet. It was not, ever, something you
admitted out loud. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">4) The part in the
acknowledgements where they talked about “teen after teen who honestly
believed, devastatingly, that their parents would probably rather have a dead
child than a gay one.”</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is not just something the teens believe. It is
something that is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">true. </i>I have heard <i>so many</i> parents (who may or may not have known whether
they had a queer child) explicitly say: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It
would be easier to have a dead child than a gay child. </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had a friend, a blonde gay boy, maybe 20 years old. He
wanted to be a cook and once he cooked me something Japanese that I’ve never
had again, though it was one of the best things I’d ever eaten. He told me, “My
mom asked me <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">why. Why </i>couldn’t I keep
my gayness to myself? When I told her I was suicidal, it was either kill myself
or come out, she said, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I wish you would
have killed yourself.</i>”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I told this story to another Mormon mother in horror. She
just frowned at me and said, “But it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">would</i>
have been easier.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even for queer Mormons with supportive parents, suicidality
is a major problem. In most states, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/same-sex-marriage-fewer-youth-suicide">suicide
rates fell after the legalization of gay marriage</a>. But in Utah the numbers <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/benjamin-knoll/is-the-recent-rise-in-uta_b_10798286.html">have
steadily risen</a> and are now nearly triple what they used to be. The rise—which
correlates with the LDS church’s tightening of rhetoric against gay marriage,
particularly in the 2008 push for Proposition 8 and the 2015 policy change
which bans the children of gay spouses from baptism—prompted <a href="https://health.utah.gov/wp-content/uploads/Final-Report-UtahEpiAid.pdf">the
CDC to issue a special report</a> investigating the issue. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The last time I was in Provo, I sat with the mother of a gay
Mormon boy who committed suicide. We had both since left the church, and we sat
in the bar of the hotel, holding our drinks. She told me about his first kiss.
How he was so excited. She told me how long it had been. She told me a lot of
things. The silence after she spoke told me more. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was on the phone with another queer friend once, begging
her to drive to the hospital instead of walking into traffic.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yet another queer friend once told me, “I’m doing OK… by
which I mean, I am no longer involuntarily committed… that is the standard that
I measure OK by now.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I could tell literally a hundred of these stories.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I cannot think of a single queer Mormon friend of mine who has not
struggled with depression and suicidality. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the biggest things that prevents suicidal behavior is
human connection and that is the one thing the Mormon church expressly forbids
for its queer members. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.nomorestrangers.org/things-you-should-know-when-watching-tlcs-my-husbands-not-gay-or-when-considering-a-mixed-orientation-marriage/">Most
of us leave the church.</a> We decide that it is better to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">live </i>than to be Mormon. It is harder than people understand to
leave the church. It fractures us on the inside. Giving up Mormonism is only
slightly less difficult than asking us to not be queer. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But we do not all make that decision.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And far too many of us simply don’t survive.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Things the Book Got
Wrong</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">1) Little Things</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Most of the things the book got wrong were little things,
really. Orem is many things, but it is not quieter than Provo. It is called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The </i>Honor Code, not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A </i>Honor Code at BYU. Mission interviews are not with the
missionaries. There were several little things like that.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Honestly, I’m more surprised at how much the book got right
than how much it got wrong. The authors clearly talked to actual Mormons and
did research beyond internet searches. I was most impressed by the subtext they
got right. So much of Mormonism happens in the subtext. Mormons are polite, as
the authors point out. They do not say the things they think, they are
pathologically incapable of being <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">overtly
</i>mean. The text conveyed this well.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span></i><br />
<br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2) Sebastian had not nearly enough fear of
getting in trouble at BYU</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a BYU student I was utterly terrified someone would think
I was queer. Even <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">being </i>queer was forbidden
when I was a student. Today <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">being </i>queer
won’t get you in trouble, but doing anything—<i>anything</i>—that could
remotely be considered “acting on it” could be grounds for expulsion. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Once, I told my colleague from my current university this. I
told her holding hands with another woman would have been enough to get me
thrown out of BYU. I had not admitted to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">anyone
</i>that I was not straight. I was in my 30’s, still married to a man at the
time. I have a feminine appearance. So when she looked at me, directly in the
eyes, and said “That must have been hard for you,” I felt part of my throat
close up into a choking near-gasp, feeling utterly exposed. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Incidentally, I did hold hands with a woman at BYU. I was
20. She touched my hair and she held my hand and for days I couldn’t sleep. I
was absolutely overcome with panic and shame and horror. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">No one could know. No one could find out. </i>I rationalized that it hadn’t
been… <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">wrong</i>… not exactly. (Neither
one of us admitted it was something related to… <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that.</i>) But I was utterly terrified of what it could mean and I was
utterly terrified of being found out. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sebastian and Tanner do more than hold hands.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He should have been way more freaked out by that.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i><br />
<br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">3) Sebastian generally
has too easy of a time with the physical affection </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Doing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">anything </i>more
than kissing before you’re married—even if you are a hetero Mormon couple—is
something that would require a lengthy repentance process and a confession to
the bishop. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With Sebastian’s background, he came to the conclusion that
it was OK faster than I think someone with his background would have.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here is where I start to become really torn, though. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sebastian <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">does </i>address
the question of guilt. He prays. He prays and feels peaceful. He says, “I
haven’t felt guilty about it […] which is unexpected.” He comes to decide that
God approves of his relationship. He says, “Guilt is sort of a sign that I’m
doing something wrong […] and when I feel peaceful, I know God approves of what
I’m doing.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a queer Mormon, I recognized this feeling. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mormons put a lot of emphasis on gender, on gender roles.
But they also emphasize prayer and personal revelation. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I look at myself, when I look at my partner… I start to
get a sense about the eternal nature of gender. I feel like it is more complex
and more beautiful than we understand. It is more than a simple binary. And
this feels very, very sacred. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Like Sebastian, I have never felt guilty about the fact that
I am not straight. I have never felt like I was doing something wrong when my
partner touched me. When I pray, I have never gotten the sense, even once, that God wants anything for me other than to have a relationship that makes me
happy. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But I have struggled with shame. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have struggled with the walls-closing-in-on-me sense that
my people will never accept this. That they would rather cast me out than
accept me in a relationship where I can be the kind of person I was born to be.
When Sebastian says, “It feels like I’m pushing through the dark and I know
that what’s ahead is safe, but no one is following me there,” I knew what he
was talking about. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first relationship I had with a woman failed for a lot
of reasons, but a big one was I couldn’t get past this shame. It became
debilitating, overwhelming, and I broke underneath it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And so… I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">want </i>queer
young Mormons reading this to hear Sebastian’s truth. Even if I can’t fully
accept it as 100% believable. Because I want them to understand what Tanner
understands: “A God worthy of your eternal love wouldn’t judge for who you
love.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mormons often try to simplify homosexuality down to a
question of sex, libido. It is a perversion, they say. One you can overcome
with enough prayer and fasting and faith. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But this is a lie. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Homosexuality is about so much more than sex. It is about
bonding. It is how our bodies were built to love. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And I want all the queer kids who read this book to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">believe </i>this. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Which brings me to the final bit this book got wrong…<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i><br />
<br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">4) The immediate sense
of hope</i> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Most queer Mormons do not get beyond their Mormonism the way
Sebastian does. At least not while they are still teenagers and not without the
support of affirming parents—parents who often have to walk away from the
church along with their queer children to give them the hope they need. I have
been blessed to meet many such parents working with the<a href="http://mamadragons.org/"> Mama Dragons,</a> a group that supports the
mothers of Mormon LGBT children. They are remarkable for so many reasons, not
the least of which is that they are willing to give up everything for their
children. But they are in the minority.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Queer Mormons with families like Sebastian’s go on their
missions. They enter their mixed orientation marriages. They do not tell their
parents they are gay. They struggle for years with the loneliness and despair
that comes from denying such an essential part of themselves. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I personally know dozens of people who underwent
“conversion therapy.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I personally know people who have died.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The reality for most queer Mormons is much bleaker and much more
heartbreaking than the hopeful ending of this book makes it seem. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And I loved that.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And so I don’t actually want this part of the book to be
different. It may not be accurate. But it is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">necessary</i>. Because I want young people who read it to know and
understand that they are lovely, that happy endings are possible, that there is
a way out that does not involve death. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The things this book got “wrong” are part of what makes the
book beautiful. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This book was my life, in so many ways. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The geography, the emotion, the self-loathing, the stakes. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have hiked Y mountain, I have skied on Utah Lake. I taught
at BYU for 15 years. My house, in Salt Lake City, has Brigham Young on the
deed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I wish I could have read this book as a teenager. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I wish I could have started to envision a different sort of
reality when I was young and so, so, so terrified of my own queerness. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I want every queer Mormon teenager to read this book, to
know that hope is a possibility. That even in losing your entire world and half
of your identity, there can be joy and there can be beauty. </div>
SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-48908410850982389812018-02-09T14:39:00.000-07:002018-09-28T09:08:04.770-06:00You dance<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">When I was a little girl, I started to see a woman when I prayed. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">My eyes were always closed</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> when I saw her</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">, though I wasn’t always kneeling. Sometimes I lay on my back, rigid, corpse-like. Sometimes I lay on my side, fetal and full of yearning. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">My room smelled like humidity and wood the first time I saw her. I remember the frame of my waterbed, covered in my </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">baby </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">sister’s teeth marks. I remember reaching for it, to feel the rough grooves. I remember rocking there in the bed. The water was gentle. Like a cradle. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I had been praying. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">(I often prayed, especially as a little girl.)</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I didn’t mean to make her appear. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">God to me was Father God. He was kind, attentive, but irrevocably male. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I spoke to him in formal tones, never wavering from the form of prayer taught to me in my primary classes. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Invocation</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Gratitude</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Petition</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Closing</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">(Sometimes, when I was full of that aching I never understood—sometimes I called him just Father. Sometimes I said “you,” instead of “thee” or “thou.”)</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">But </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">it was a woman who </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">appeared. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">She kept appearing, even though I never asked her to.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">(I don’t know if she would have appeared if I’d asked.)</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">She was a shadow.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">A shape I saw on the back of my right—always my right—eye. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">She was veiled, her face had no features.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">But she was, unarguably, a woman. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I didn’t know if she</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> was the Virgin Mary, or maybe M</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">other God. I didn’t know who she was. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I only know she made me feel peace.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">When I was very pregnant with my first child, I desperately wanted a woman. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I didn’t know what to make of it—the desperation. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">It was unformed. Primal. Overpowering. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I told myself it was something biological, something to do with child birth. Having a woman around would increase survival in my female ancestors. </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Which</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> would explain it, I told myself. It would explain this overwhelming need. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I remember pacing in my tiny bathroom. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I was barefoot, the linoleum smooth against the soles of my feet. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I was too hot, too cold.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I washed my hands once, twice. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I pumped the soap, deliberately.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I washed every finger and then</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I reached out to dry them on a towel hanging on the wall. I can still remember the rough feel of the terrycloth underneath my fingertips. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I could see the woman then—or rather an echo of her.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I cried out in the bathroom, holding my too-full belly in my hands.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I must have put on shoes, or gotten a coat. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">It was February and everything was frozen.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">All I knew was that… I… needed. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I didn’t know what. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I didn’t know who to call or how to get it.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I didn’t know how to pray to a </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Father God</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">, not about this</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">(Father God could never understand this kind of ache.)</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">It was dark as I drove. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I drove away. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">My cell phone lost its signal as the lights of the city disappeared. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I was deep in the desert.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">The ground was salt and dirt, nothing grew.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">The shadows of the mountains were long in the moonlight. They reflected in the salt water pools. All I could see was shadow and </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">mirror</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Barren.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">It was barren.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I wanted to stay</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> until the aching let up</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">, but I couldn’t. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">My contractions got harder and faster and I was alone and smart enough to panic.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">So I drove myself home, giving no explanation to my husband when I got there. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">My children were still practically babies when I lost a quarter of my skin. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Most of it to infection, the rest to prevent a cancer from spreading. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Once, I was admitted to the burn ICU within minutes of my temperature spiking, just as the infection was entering my bloodstream. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">It had been a woman who sent me there. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">She was my nurse. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I’d gone for a checkup with my oncologist. I knew I wasn’t healing well. That my graft had failed. That a fetid stench was coming from my wound vac. My doctor had scheduled me for another surgery in a week.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">They wheeled me into the office because I couldn’t walk. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">My nurse had never met me. She was new to the office. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">She said hello and then she looked at me. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I remember the way she looked at me. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">She got quiet.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">She took my temperature. It was normal. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">She took my blood pressure. It was normal.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">“Something is wrong,” she said. “Something is more wrong than they think.”</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">There was nothing to indicate she was right. No signs. Nothing that could be marked on a chart. She had instinct, alone.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">But she made a phone call and I was taken to the burn unit for a consult. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Sepsis has a 50% mortality rate. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">And I arrived in the unit </span><span class="s3" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-style: italic; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">minutes </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">before I had any signs of it.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Once, I woke up from surgery screaming. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">The (male) </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">surgeon</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> didn’t believe the </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">chart, with its calculation of how much medication I would need, and so he changed it; he changed it and the nurse taking care of me couldn’t give me anything that wasn’t on the chart. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I remember I tried not to scream.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Or rather, I remember being outside myself, telling myself not to scream. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">There wasn’t any control. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">There was antiseptic, beeping. I could smell waste and cotton. I wanted to thrash my arms, my legs, but I couldn’t move. I </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">could </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">hardly open my eyes. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I remember hearing my doctor’s voice when she got there. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">(She ran, they told me. She ran all the way from oncology when she heard my screams on the phone.)</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">“She is a cancer patient.” She was out of breath. Nearl</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">y yelling. “Not a burn patient. </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">The calculation is different.”</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I remember seeing her fuzzy form as she held up a syringe, as she put it into my IV. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Her hand on my face was cool. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">“I’m so sorry,” she was saying. “This won’t happen again. Oh, honey. I am so sorry."</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Once I almost died.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">(More than once, but this time was different.)</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I was unconscious, I knew I wasn’t breathing.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">The air around me got cold. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">There were stars and quiet and motion.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I moved through a wind. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">There was a woman waiting for me.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">She wasn’t beautiful. I’m not even sure she was human. But she was kind.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">She took my hand. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">“Kerry,” she said. “Your mother gave you so many gifts.”</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I knew it was true. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">(I didn't know if she was my mother, or if she spoke for her.)</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">She touched my hair. “So do you know what to do?” she asked.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I didn't know. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">She smiled at me. “</span><span class="s3" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-style: italic; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">You dance,</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">” she said. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">There is a librarian at school who looks like a woman I kissed. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">She has short hair—I can’t tell if it’s blonde or grey—and wears big, round glasses. She’s small, dwarfed by her computer. She hunches over it, the enormity of her computer screen, or maybe the weight of my memories, making her look fragile. Whenever she sees me she smiles, as if she knows me. (She doesn’t. I think.)</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I wasn’t ready to be kissed by a woman. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I knew it was coming, but I didn’t know how to be ready for it. I didn’t know how to be ready for something I had spent so many years of my life fighting out of my consciousness. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I didn’t have time to imagine what it would feel like to have her reach out and put her hand on my neck. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">It had been a habit, to shut thoughts like that down.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I could get as far as seeing a hand coming for my face, and I would slam the thought closed, like a book or a door. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">All that would be left was a darkness, its edges red with shame. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I don't remember is she asked before she kissed me. (I would have said she could.)</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Her voice shook. Her hands shook. She pulled the car off the road. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I knew she was going to do it and I could have stopped her, but I didn’t have the words</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">—didn’t even understand how I wasn’t ready, or what it would take to </span><span class="s3" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-style: italic; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">be </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">ready</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">All I knew was that </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">red-tinged darkness. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I hadn’t been able to let myself imagine a kiss, and part of me thought actually kissing was the only way around it. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">But I wasn’t ready for it. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I wasn’t ready for the way it made the edges of red grow crimson. I didn’t know how to get past the closing book, the slamming door. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I was reaching in, reaching </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">through, I should have known </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">hand</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">s</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> would get caught in the closing.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">When the librarian smiles at me, I still feel the edges of that red shame. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">wonder if I should have said no.</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> I think about what it means that she isn’t in my life anymore. (</span><span class="s3" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-style: italic; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Can’t</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> be in my life anymore.)</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I want to pull the librarian aside—ask her to forgive me. Tell her I didn’t understand how not knowing myself well enough could so thoroughly hurt her.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">But, of course, </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">she is not the one I hurt.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">And </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I wonder where is the line between guilt and shame. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Sometimes I dance in my kitchen. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I make myself something with vodka in it (I am outside the church now; I am allowed to drink vodka) and I dance in the kitchen.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I’d like to think I look wild. That my dancing is laughter in motion, spinning circles of what it means that my life </span><span class="s3" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-style: italic; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">matters</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">, that I am alive.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I suspect it looks nothing like this. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I say “suspect,” but I </span><span class="s3" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-style: italic; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">know </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">it doesn’t. My partner videotaped me dating once. My motions were clumsy, like an adolescent giraffe. The joy was evident, but that was its only beauty.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">It doesn’t really matter. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I dance because I am alive.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I dance because she told me to. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I dance because </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">it</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">. </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">is</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">. </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">the</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">. </span><span class="s3" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-style: italic; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">point</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Father God still watches me.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I feel him, hovering on the edges of my mind. Or spirit. Is there a difference? I can’t tell. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I can’t pray to him. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">To his credit, he seems to understand. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s3" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-style: italic; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Go away,</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> I want to tell him. </span><span class="s3" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-style: italic; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Stop watching me. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">He knows I cannot talk to him. Knows better than me why I can’t. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">She watches me, too. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">In the darkness, I kiss my partner. Her hands hold the edge of my face, her mouth against mine soft. She pulls me to her and I feel…</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">There aren’t words for what I feel. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">There are only words for what I see.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I see </span><span class="s3" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-style: italic; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">her. </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">In the shadows, behind my right eye. (Always my right eye.)</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">She is still veiled.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">She is still faceless. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">She is still love—the feeling, the being, the presence of it.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "times new roman"; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">She still brings me peace. </span></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">
<br /></div>
SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-47988777099356366172018-01-03T13:14:00.002-07:002018-01-03T13:21:04.057-07:00Thomas Monson, Love, and Biological Fragility<style>
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Shortly after he became prophet, I happened to run into
Thomas Monson at Little America. He was escorted, with his wife, to the table
next to ours, where we were out eating with our family. Frances, his wife,
ordered soup and ate it with single minded purpose, not looking up as people
came to talk to her husband. At first, I thought of trying to hide my diet
coke, but then didn’t. It was so very… <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Salt
Lake City</i>… to run into the prophet at dinner and to worry about my
caffeinated beverage. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But
as I watched him talk to people, something changed. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It
was a feeling. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
couldn’t pinpoint it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>His
words weren’t slurred. He made eye contact. He answered questions. But…
something was wrong. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Something
was wrong and I felt it, even if I couldn’t name it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Looking
back, I think it was the beginning of his illness. I think, from the very
beginning, he was losing a bit of who he was. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>For
nearly my entire life, I loved Thomas Monson. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
loved that he preached love. I loved that he said people were more important
than problems. I loved the stories he told about being kind. Helping the
widows, serving the orphans. I loved that his message was always inclusion and
love, never exclusion. He called us to gather together, never to cast out. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Which
was why Proposition 8 was so painful.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It
was a departure. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It
was unkind. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It
was choosing the letter of the law over Christ’s command to love one another. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When
it happened, I remember feeling sick. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And
I remember thinking of that moment, in the Little America, when I had been so
excited to see a man I had loved for so long and so struck that… something… was
wrong.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
am a gay Mormon. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
church’s backing of Proposition 8, the 2015 policy of exclusion, barring the
underage children of same-sex spouses from baptism, these represented, for me,
the end of my membership in the church. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
am a Mormon. I will always be a Mormon. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But,
largely because of policies enacted by Thomas Monson, I have been cast out from
my people. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But
as a gay Mormon, here is something I know: none of us can escape our biology.
We are all subject to the primal forces that cause our cells to cleave, drive
our lungs to breathe. We are all fragile creatures, corruptible, imperfect. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Thomas Monson spent most of his life teaching us that God loves us anyway. Even when we don’t
deserve it. Even when we know we are unlovable. God loves us, even when we are
broken.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And
all of us are broken. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It
is hard to celebrate someone who is largely responsible for a great deal of my
own personal pain. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But
I saw with my own eyes his fragility. I felt with my own spirit that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this was not right. </i>I know, with all of
my own biological imperfections, that God loves me. That god has never
abandoned me. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And
so I am trying to forgive his brokenness. I am trying to remember what he spent
the vast majority of his life teaching me: that, in the end, people are more
important than problems. That, in the end, God loves us. That, more than any
law, we should love each other. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Love
must always be more important.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Let
that lesson be his legacy. </div>
SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-13297216855317481192017-10-04T09:54:00.000-06:002017-10-04T09:54:33.741-06:00Bodies are creepy and powerful<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I am thinking about bodies today. They are eerie and mysterious and they <i>know </i>things and they <i>do </i>things and they affect us in ways we only barely understand.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Last night I had PMS. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I assume it was PMS. I was lying in my bed, weepy and tired. My lamplight was on, the room smelled vaguely like our puppy--who really needs a bath because damn. I kept trying to think of why I was weepy. What had made me that way? What was wrong? I couldn't settle on anything. But it <i>had </i>been about a month since my last major bout with the weepies. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I don't really have periods (God bless my Mirena), but ever since seeing Heather became a daily thing, I get PMS. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I also get sick when she's gone. Within a day of her leaving on her last business trip, I'd lost my voice and found myself shaking in the hot bathtub, cold, coughing, and miserable. Within a day of her getting back, I had my voice again, my throat no longer burned, I felt--and <i>was</i>--better.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Human bodies affect each other. Through touch, through breath, on a molecular level we affect each other. The swings in oxytocin, in estrogen, in the countless other hormones and neurochemicals that swim in our veins, through these, we affect each other. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We are, all of us, biological creatures. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We fight that, I think. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We want to believe we have <i>choice. </i>(I want to believe I have choice.)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But even if I do: my body has an opinion. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Awhile ago I had to make a choice--decide what to do. I'm not going to talk about that choice here. (I'm not sure I'm ever going to talk about it, to be honest. Though I might. Someday.) What matters is this: I wasn't sure what the right thing was. I wasn't sure at all. But I knew when I thought of the one option--no matter how much I wanted it, no matter how much I <i>thought </i>it was the right one, no matter how much it was what I'd always thought I wanted--whenever I leaned toward it, I would feel sick. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I am Mormon. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's an identity I claim, however much I no longer fit the rigid definition of Mormonism I grew up with because I am queer and I have decided to stop fighting that fact. I am queer. And I am Mormon. And both of those things are part of me. Even the church can't take that away.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I was taught as a child about prayer, about stupor. Discernment. My patriarch told me I had a gift for it. You know the right thing in your mind <i>and </i>your heart. You know the right thing, because you cannot hold the wrong thought in your head. You feel the spirit in your body. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Truth manifests: in the body. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Mormons are not big on the "weakness" of flesh. We don't particularly believe that humans are fallen, that mortality is a corrupted state. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But we do believe in the sanctity of the body. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My body has taught me things that the Mormons couldn't. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But the Mormons taught me to trust my body. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's only one of a thousand contractions I'm only just beginning to work out. </span>SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-44630736541915921742017-05-31T02:54:00.003-06:002017-05-31T02:54:28.268-06:00The End of my Secret Page of Doomed LoveI've been following this page on Twitter. It had 3 followers and, like, years of tweets. One-sided conversations. Maybe there was another Twitter account responding, but there were no outside replies, no linked @accounts, posts only responded to themselves. It was, like, this doomed love story. Like watching a broken heart rage and prattle into the void. She posted love songs, she asked how her love was doing. On the top of the page was a thing about how "I will always love you."<br />
<br />
Based on the times posted, and the vocabulary used, I think she's based in the U.K.<br />
<br />
Tonight she locked the page down. Said Twitter had lost its meaning. That she needed to move on and had to let [him?] go. She posted one last, heartbreaking, song, and then wrote GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT before locking the page.<br />
<br />
I'm surprised how gutted I am by this, y'all.<br />
<br />
#ModernLove<br />
#TwitterTragedies<br />
#HeartbreakSWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-84989290621670058072017-04-17T13:40:00.000-06:002017-04-17T13:40:24.281-06:00Love makes fools of all of us
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<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Here is what I know of love: it makes fools of all of us. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We
can be perfectly rational creatures. We act with sense, with decorum, with
measured steps. That is, we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">normally </i>act
that way. But love: it makes us irrational. We find ourselves doing things. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ridiculous </i>things. We cannot control the
way our thoughts ever circle. We cannot control the surge of feelings in our
chest, our fingers, our stomach. We cannot stop the torrent of images that
dance behind our eyes as we try to sleep. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Love
renders the strongest of us utterly powerless. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
do not try to excuse what I did. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>For
no matter the cause, my actions were still my own. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
would like to think that if I knew the consequences, I would have done
something differently. But that is impossible. We cannot know how things will
end. Things that are utterly tangled unweave themselves and work out for the
best. And things that feel clean and true can end up staining us deeper than
blood. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One
thing is clear to me now, now that everything has passed: I am not sure I would
have done anything differently. Even knowing how it would end. Because love is
not the elixir of fools because only fools drink it.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>All
of us—</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Every
blessed one—</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>All
of us can be lost to it. </span></div>
SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-73520773407877607442017-04-06T12:29:00.001-06:002017-04-06T12:29:25.240-06:00You Cannot Stop Your Body From ScreamingFound this in an old text this morning. It seemed... useful to the day.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
What I learned from cancer: you cannot stop your body from screaming.<br />
<br />
We have this arrogant idea that how we respond to stuff is a <i>choice. </i>We say to ourselves, "Well, I can't help but feel pain, but I can choose how I respond to it, right?"<br />
<br />
Wrong. <br />
<br />
When you hurt enough, it does not matter.<br />
<i> </i><br />
There is no choice.<br />
<br />
You <i>will scream. </i><br />
<br />
Meaning: things we think are choices? They are not always choices.<br />
<i> </i><br />
Only God knows the difference--knows where the line is.<br />
<br />
The rest of us just have to forgive ourselves.<br />
<br />
And the people who hurt us. SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-16130099094221112972017-02-25T09:00:00.000-07:002017-02-25T11:48:35.338-07:00And then I went, "Well. This dream is very unsubtle."I dreamed that I went back to visit my old BYU colleagues. They'd been relegated to a temporary building--the kind that made up the bulk of my over-crowded elementary school. On the white board in the front of the classroom/office was a quote about "Daughters of Zion."<br />
<br />
Lisa Rumsey Harris came up to me, apologetically. "So..." she said. "BYU has this new policy?"<br />
<br />
I knew she meant just for the women. (Or maybe just for me.) Because it was a dream and you know stuff like that.<br />
<br />
She was holding a chain in her hands. "We're going to have to actually bind your hands. I'm sorry. I won't do it very tight."<br />
<br />
I held out my hands for her to bind. "This is so BYU," I said. "It's not like I'm gonna hurt anyone with these. Boys are, like, way more likely to do that. Yunno. Statistically speaking."<br />
<br />
Lisa said, "Oh, I hear you. It is ridiculous." She wrapped the chains around my wrists once, twice. Three times. "But, hey," she said. "At least these chains are really cute ones."<br />
<br />
I looked down at them. They were cute. They had little sparkly hearts on them.<br />
<br />
And then I went, "Well. This dream is very unsubtle."<br />
<br />
And I woke up.SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-52532871877234623682017-02-04T23:52:00.002-07:002017-02-25T00:41:43.850-07:00This morning I woke up thinking, "I was having a sex dream..."and I was super excited cuz I never do, so before I opened my eyes I tried really hard to remember it...<br />
<br />
and I did...<br />
<br />
but I wasn't having sex.<br />
<br />
I was eating a sandwich.SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-28275936426962606972017-01-30T19:46:00.000-07:002017-04-17T14:41:33.452-06:00Caterpillars, Hamburgers, and Mayonaise<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Something happened in my class
today. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Or rather… it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">didn’t </i>happen.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
And it’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not </i>happening… I am haunted by it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
We were discussing our biases.
(It’s a rhetoric class. We do that sort of thing.) The class was lively,
everyone chiming in with only perfunctory attention to traditional decorum.
Hand raising was half assed, at best. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“I have a bias,” someone said,
“against caterpillars.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“Against Caterpillars?” I asked. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“Yes.” She nodded and sat back in
her chair. “I love butterflies. But I cannot stand caterpillars.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I tilted my head in mock shock,
“Isn’t that, like, the insect equivalent of hating babies?” I asked. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Someone from the back of the room
shouted, “I have a bias against babies!” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
There was a gasp of laughing horror
at that. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“I will tell my mom everything
about my roommate’s love life,” someone said. “But I refuse to tell her about
my own.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“I only like little dogs,” said
someone else.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“I don’t even like dogs!”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
And then a girl in the front row
said, “I am always falling in love with women. I don't ever want to date anyone but women. But I just never like sleeping
with them as much as I like sleeping with men.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“Well,” I responded. “Pretty sure
you’re not the only one who’s felt <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that.”
</i>Which made people laugh even harder than they already were. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
And then someone said, “I hate
hamburgers with mayonnaise. Just hate them. I mean, why even have a burger if
you’re going to do that to it?!”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
And the game went on. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
NBD. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
About five years ago, before we
moved to Maryland, when I was at still teaching at BYU, a boy—brown hair,
troubled expression, wrinkled T-shirt—said during class, “I think we’re too
mean to gay people in this church.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
The initial response from the class
was silence. It lasted maybe ten seconds. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
And then there were protests.
Polite at first. “We love the sinners,” someone said. “We hate the sin.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
But the boy, his face growing ever
more troubled, said, “I… I guess I just don’t see the sin.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
At which point the class completely
pounced on him. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I don’t even remember what they
said. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Stuff about obeying the prophets. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Stuff about right and wrong.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Stuff about morality and purity and
chastity.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
The carpets had been cleaned that
week. I remember the stale smell of still-wet fibers, clinging like a mildew to
it all.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Because there was something nearly
primal about the way they turned on him. Animals, encircling a threat. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
And they <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">literally</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">encircled </i>him. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
They turned from all corners of the
room, some nearly jumping out of their chairs. Everyone facing him. Everyone
talking over each other.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
They utterly and completely
shut.him.down. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I felt helpless as I watched. Their
reaction was so much more violent than I expected. Their speech so little
concerned with charity. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
They seemed to have absolutely zero
awareness that, odds were nearly certain, at least one person in that room was
gay.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I stuttered. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I tried to interject.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
There was nothing I could think to
say. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
In my entire teaching career, I
have never felt more helpless, more at a loss, more of a failure to my students
than I did that day. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
And then today happened. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Today: when we talked about caterpillars.
We talked about how it was just so hard when you couldn’t decide which gender
you preferred to sleep with. And the (non) response? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
That hamburgers are so destroyed by
mayonnaise. </div>
SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-25974307970938839622017-01-29T10:24:00.001-07:002017-02-25T00:42:24.615-07:00And then I go, "Oh. This is an allegory."The good news: I remembered my dream last night for the first time in forever!<br />
<br />
The bad news: It was as judgy as a bad Sunday School lesson.<br />
<br />
It started with an earthquake.<br />
<br />
But it wasn't, like, a scary earthquake. It was more like a, "Hey! Pay attention!" Earthquake.<br />
<br />
And then I looked outside the window & there was this bum who was eating the leaves off our bushes. Then he'd spit out the berries cuz poison. He was obviously hungry.<br />
<br />
Then I was all, if I were Christian, I'd feed him.<br />
<br />
But he was scary looking so... I just sat there.<br />
<br />
But then I did a re-take & was like, *if I were Christian I'd feed him.*<br />
<br />
So I drag myself up, go to the door to look for him & invite him in.<br />
<br />
But he's gone, and instead there're crowds of hungry people.<br />
<br />
And then I go, "Oh. This is an allegory."<br />
<br />
And I wake up.SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-61111626320705472142016-11-28T09:11:00.000-07:002017-02-05T09:12:39.532-07:00Afternoon conversation Me: Hey, Lil. How was school?<br />
<br />
10yo: Productive. Catherine and I spent some time conducting Scientific Research.<br />
<br />
Me: What kind?<br />
<br />
10yo: We timed how long it would take to spin in circles, get dizzy, and fall down.<br />
<br />
Me: That sounds like two physiological events: first, the onset of dizziness and second the point at which the dizziness resulted in catastrophic loss of balance. How did you separate the two?<br />
<br />
10yo: We didn't. It's tricky to tell the start of dizziness, but when you fall, you fall.<br />
<br />
Me: So what you're saying is that you favored the objective event over the subjective reporting of one?<br />
<br />
10yo: Exactly. I spun for six minutes before I fell down. My head hurt at the end.<br />
<br />
Me: That was probably a predictable outcome.<br />
<br />
10yo: But worth it. Because Michael only made it five minutes before he fell down.<br />
<br />
Me: Impressive.<br />
<br />
10yo: Unfortunately, Catherine's dad showed up to take her home before she got to spin.<br />
<br />
Me: Well, that's just going to skew your whole dataset.<br />
<br />
10yo: I know! It was a very disappointing end of the study.<br />
<br />
#sometimesitssohardnottolaughwhentheytalktomeSWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-55565715679221202522016-11-20T09:05:00.000-07:002017-02-05T09:06:40.022-07:00Afternoon Conversation 10yo Lily: You know what the problem with this world is?<br />
<br />
Me: No, but I'm sure you're going to tell me.<br />
<br />
Lily: Gender normative hegemony. That's the problem.<br />
<br />
Me: I never should have taught you that phrase.<br />
<br />
Lily: Do you know what that means?<br />
<br />
Me: I literally just said I taught you what it meant.<br />
<br />
Lily: It means that maybe I don't want to have an appropriately girly Halloween costume. Maybe I want to dress up as Thor.<br />
<br />
Me: Be honest. You just want that hammer.<br />
<br />
Lily: It means that maybe I'm sick of people asking me if I'm going back to work after I have my baby. Maybe I wish they'd ask my husband that.<br />
<br />
Me: You realize you're neither pregnant nor do you have a husband, right?<br />
<br />
Lily: And don't even get me started about Trump and Hillary.<br />
<br />
Me: Please. Please don't get started on that.<br />
<br />
Lily: The thing is...<br />
<br />
Me: You're right. One day without talking about the election was WAY too much to ask.<br />
<br />
Lily: The thing is, people don't even realize that, like, so much of their dislike for Hillary comes down to bias they're not aware of.<br />
<br />
Me: You really don't need to have this conversation with me.<br />
<br />
Lily: I bet you never thought of that, did you?<br />
<br />
Me: Oh for the love.<br />
<br />
[& BTW, Lil: yes. Yes I did. http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org/2016/05/implicit-bias-and-authority-why-voting-for-a-woman-simply-because-shes-a-woman-isnt-actually-a-bad-idea/ ]SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-19131334755410253232016-05-25T04:58:00.001-06:002016-05-25T04:58:09.388-06:00Implicit Gender Bias and Authority<a href="http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org/">FMH</a> just posted <a href="http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org/2016/05/implicit-bias-and-authority-why-voting-for-a-woman-simply-because-shes-a-woman-isnt-actually-a-bad-idea/">an essay I wrote about implicit bias</a>. I think my <a href="http://individualizedmedicineblog.mayoclinic.org/discussion/is-genome-editing-in-our-future/">sister's post on gene editing</a> still probably wins the "coolest blog post of the month" award. But she works for Mayo, so that's a totally unfair comparison.<br />
<br />
Also: my mom is totally not going to believe me when I say my motives are more about discussing the neuro/cognitive effects of bias than politics. But, yunno. Full disclosure: not a Trump fan.SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-18791333267928309132015-05-22T14:16:00.005-06:002017-02-25T00:42:58.969-07:00Afternoon ConversationMe: [playing the piano]<br />
<br />
Sam: “MOM! What IS THAT?!”<br />
<br />
Me: “It’s called ‘<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBMDRGnhj9s">Jupiter.</a>’ It’s from the ‘Planets.’”<br />
<br />
Sam: “OMG, MOM! It sounds SO GOOD. It sounds like… It sounds like it’s from a video game!!”<br />
<br />
Me: “Well, it <i>is </i>a classic.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[Obviously that’s not me in the video. That’s cuz I didn’t take one. The part I was playing was the “Chorale.” It starts at min. 3:30.]<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyTYvBaEvi2aJBn49lJnFU-Hb1NueEG_TlTqmvPRwj9YkoLgp0y-stdxjCb-TGUV0BdGhX0lRmIGo2rymN4HOjNJy-1hr0nqmiWAZcUFD72PRWRI7aI559-zZridoXsLVyzRho/s1600/video+game+moon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyTYvBaEvi2aJBn49lJnFU-Hb1NueEG_TlTqmvPRwj9YkoLgp0y-stdxjCb-TGUV0BdGhX0lRmIGo2rymN4HOjNJy-1hr0nqmiWAZcUFD72PRWRI7aI559-zZridoXsLVyzRho/s320/video+game+moon.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-43890419320051835502015-05-20T14:23:00.000-06:002015-05-22T14:23:25.983-06:00Sam Looking Good in his New Suit<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv99AX552PjPF7Bj2HFV3UaFRnOxoKhxS3blXXlj-tzGk31RQUPDAy5_CS_hA1MlUdLbvVjOGb1nHSjSUprS_PdrFfaDusAGIuA_zEkJbT_SUBMvg1BdTtAuiW2BWNZvhfBNaG/s1600/Sam+dressed+up.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv99AX552PjPF7Bj2HFV3UaFRnOxoKhxS3blXXlj-tzGk31RQUPDAy5_CS_hA1MlUdLbvVjOGb1nHSjSUprS_PdrFfaDusAGIuA_zEkJbT_SUBMvg1BdTtAuiW2BWNZvhfBNaG/s320/Sam+dressed+up.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-4w_IyH_cb0T2vgXTWBJAEOEYVAzB7F2e4NczhDEQDl8BiCzfa8CbidTrAKDHCg4O6BT0jiggDr5MRk-S1amfCW-KtyEM-xJg3wMOmwWveV-P6bBTIYhBKOh0vqX52O4sWwEn/s1600/Sam+Sheepish+Suit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-4w_IyH_cb0T2vgXTWBJAEOEYVAzB7F2e4NczhDEQDl8BiCzfa8CbidTrAKDHCg4O6BT0jiggDr5MRk-S1amfCW-KtyEM-xJg3wMOmwWveV-P6bBTIYhBKOh0vqX52O4sWwEn/s320/Sam+Sheepish+Suit.jpg" width="176" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho37DzA80pRent0Y5kvsbNS3SUA3npC1vrxqoKwMc_h9pcurMwG6yE8ViUI5ifHChK07Ttoz26oGoVqTVA6BsZrDUK_m_w5s26jeiaZ3G4n08NRP_CURFPS8kvtUW9oGfmeYYG/s1600/Sam+eyeball+roll+Suit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho37DzA80pRent0Y5kvsbNS3SUA3npC1vrxqoKwMc_h9pcurMwG6yE8ViUI5ifHChK07Ttoz26oGoVqTVA6BsZrDUK_m_w5s26jeiaZ3G4n08NRP_CURFPS8kvtUW9oGfmeYYG/s320/Sam+eyeball+roll+Suit.jpg" width="176" /></a></div>
<br />SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-44234856411489710242015-05-18T08:11:00.001-06:002017-02-25T00:43:53.043-07:00Morning ConversationLily: “OMG, Mom. It is, like, <i>wet </i>outside. I can feel it on my toes and my face and my arms… <i>But there isn’t actually any water! </i>There’s no rain, there’s no puddles. But it’s just... so… <i>wet!”</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Me: “Yes, Honey. That’s called humidity.”<br />
<br />
Lily: “It would <i>never </i>do this in Utah.”<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br /></div>
SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-39137429963467813592015-03-24T11:56:00.000-06:002015-04-29T11:56:44.677-06:00First sign that spring is comingThere are no leaves on the trees, no grass, no plants at all, really, and there are snow flurries in the air. But this little guy was sticking straight up in my front yard this morning, defying all of it.<br />
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SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-74413694438058848952015-03-20T11:53:00.000-06:002015-04-29T11:53:50.682-06:00The first day of Spring, but no sign of it yet<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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(Taken at Dawn: Our Backyard)</div>
SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-4655115957568009682014-11-20T11:51:00.000-07:002015-04-29T11:51:51.529-06:00Our First East Coast Fall Does Not Disappoint<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-27680016371658670832014-08-14T06:27:00.000-06:002015-04-29T11:54:34.623-06:00We’re Moving to Maryland!And it is a crazy beautiful place. For example: a tree on our street, and our new backyard.<br />
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SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12658930.post-19141171011386103242014-05-12T23:44:00.003-06:002014-05-12T23:45:28.192-06:00Lily and Mette: On HappinessI was reading <a href="http://metteharrison.livejournal.com/469287.html" target="_blank">this post by Mette Harrison</a> (author of, among other things, one of my favorite books from my dissertation sample, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Princess-Hound-Mette-Ivie-Harrison-ebook/dp/B001QIGZRW/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1399950348&sr=8-5&keywords=mette+ivie+harrison" target="_blank">The Princess and the Hound</a>).<br />
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She pretty much outlined everything that people don’t want to think is true about publishing their books. (And she’s pretty much right about all of it!) Publishing a book isn’t going to automatically fix our problems and make us suddenly more confident and/or emotionally stable. The people who will be happy after publishing a book are the ones who were happy when their book was <i>un</i>published. The miserable will find a way to stay miserable and the goal-chasers will discover that achieving the goal of publication only leads to the sudden appearance (and importance) of newer, bigger, more urgent goals. It’s not the achievement of our ambitions that makes us happy. It’s not really any single <i>event</i> that brings happiness to us. We are happy people, or we’re not. Maybe we can <i>choose</i> to be happy. But it’s never going to come from <i>outside. </i>Happiness is internal, not external.<br />
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I’ve known that. I’ve read people who argued the same and I’ve seen studies confirming the argument and I believed it before and I believe it now. (Most of the time.)<br />
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But Lily hasn’t. And Lily doesn’t.<br />
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And the timing of Mette’s post (well, the timing of my <i>reading </i>of the post)… it made me laugh!<br />
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See, just yesterday, Lily was having this epic meltdown.<br />
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This, in and of itself, isn’t terribly surprising. My beauty of a daughter has a meltdown every.single.night at <i>exactly</i> 8:30pm (or, yunno, pretty close to then;). She has done this every night for the last eight years. (aka, her entire life.)<br />
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We call it “The Eight O’Clock Blues.”<br />
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But even though it happens every.single.night, even though I take pictures of her crying every night and post them in a “eight o’clock blues” journal next to a picture of the clock and her explanation-of-the-day-for-said-tears-that-is-absolutely-not-and-never-will-ever-be-just-because-she’s-tired, she will <b>NOT</b> believe there is a pattern at work. She says, “Mommy, I’m crying because I had a fight with so-and-so” or because “I miss grandma,” or “I just can’t get over how much it bothers me that even though I want a puppy so much Daddy keeps being so mean and lame and saying no just because he’s allergic and afraid his throat will close!” or she says she's crying “Because, Mommy! You always take my picture when I cry!" (okay... I’ll give her that one!) or “Because, Mommy, YOU WON’T BELIEVE ME THAT I’M NOT TIRED!”<br />
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Basically, she’s sad for a million reasons as long as they’re <i>NOT</i> about the clock on the wall. (Or the “T” word.)<br />
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So, yesterday she’s having this epic meltdown and it’s escalating and devolving rapidly into full on tantrum/F-5-level-destruction mode.<br />
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I said to her, “Honey, just take a breath and close your eyes. If you just <i>trust </i>me, I promise you will be totally asleep in 2 seconds and it will fix <i>all of THIS!”</i><br />
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She did not appreciate this advice.<br />
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She said, “Mommy, you just don’t understand! If Daddy had just listened to me and put a swing in my bedroom today like I wanted him to, I wouldn’t be sad at ALL!”<br />
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I said, “Honey, I promise you: you still would.”<br />
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Her face got that purple hue of that kids faces get when screaming at the top of their decibel range. “I WOULD NOT!!! IF HE HAD JUST LISTENED TO ME IT WOULD HAVE FIXED EVERYTHING!!! I WOULD BE COMPLETELY HAPPY AND I WOULD NOT BE CRYING AT ALL!!!"<br />
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I stopped trying to reason with her.<br />
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I <i>wanted </i>to tell her about all those happiness studies. About how external events don’t really have control over your long term happiness. About how the experience of happiness is a chemical one and how her brain would be miserable at 8:30p even if every single one of her wishes came true and every person on earth listened to her demands and readily agreed to them.<br />
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But I would be wasting my breath.<br />
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Because <i>none </i>of us really want to believe that. (Let alone tired 8 year olds.) We <i>all </i>want to think that something can fall out of the sky and make us permanently happy forEVER. That the “fix” for our problems can and might and will probably occur without our work or thought or input. It will just <i>happen </i>and <i>everything </i>will be better.<br />
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Actually, yeah. That sounds really great. Maybe I’ll change my vote on the issue...<br />
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So. What would make <i>you </i>happy?<br />
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<br />SWILUAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14676123927004595983noreply@blogger.com2