recycling round-up

so i'm moving, again, although this time it's only to a house across the street from my current (beloved) apartment. one of the (many) unfortunate side-effects of moving is packing, and it struck me this time that I have boxes of papers that began their lives in Cincinnati, traveled through 3 apartments and a storage center in Detroit, and are not living in my office, being heavy and un-looked at. you might think from that description that these boxes have been static, but this is not so. they are full of...paper. paper in folders. student evals in inter-departmental-mail folders. stapled papers. old notebooks. alligator-clipped papers. index cards. etc. and we all know that (especially for me) paper breeds more paper.

one of the ways that i have coped with a busy life and a brain that wants to be a cricket is by making...things. lists. calendars. charts. notes. in spite of the plethora of online and electronic tools for staying on track and organizing your life, what helps me most is doing things myself, longhand, on paper. because i need these aids, i am usually very reluctant to throw them away, even when their time has past, or what i have forgotten i already made a Ten Measures chart and now have a new one. consequently, i am living in the midst of sherwood forest, and it's growing.

i've been trying to be ruthless about throwing these things away. do i *really* need my notes from Kamholtz's capstone class? not really. do i even really need the notes from my more recent, more rhetoric-oriented classes? again, not really. i don't remember the notes i took on the books, for one thing. and for another, i took those notes to understand, rather than with a direction, so any new use of those books will probably mean reading them again anyway. so i'm going through all the notes and things and throwing much of the paper out.

even as i eliminate these notes, though, i don't want to lose what is genuinely still precious to me about them - my own commentary on my classmates, and/or quotes from my instructors. this seems as good a place as any to immortalize these men and women who (clearly) most impacted my life through their jokes. i think the clear lesson here is that no one is funnier than Jeff...



CINCINNATI 

Kamholtz: "All plays have to have an old guy." 

Me (of a classmate): "Oh, he's told me at some length how sincere he is."
Sue: "Oh, well, that's like Poe's narrators telling you they're not insane."

Kamholtz (04.08.09): "...who is right and who is righteous, and who is wrong and who is wrongteous."

Slotkin: "Harris tweed is for life."

Kamholtz (of easel paintings): "It just sits on the wall - that's what it does for a living."

Kamholtz (of still life painting): "You're looking at me now, but I've got you. I've got your cellphone number." And later "By God, what a well-painted stalk of asparagus."


OTHER

Unknown: "Cooking is like making love to a woman. It reeks of garlic. And death." 

Coworkers in dental office:

• (Of a flier) "Can we scan that into color?"
• "How do you get email on a different computer?"
• (Of someone being idle) "Hanging like a hair on a biscuit."
• (While getting me to type something) "The number O."

Secret Archive Lance: "Uh, grinding was invented before 2001."

Secret Archive Joe: "No good can come of being elfed." 

Secret Archive Joe: "I don't trust strawberries. They wear their babies on the outside."

WAYNE STATE

Of Jim Brown's new media class: "And at 7:56pm, on the 1st day of class, we have our first Matrix reference. Ugh."

Jim: "Are we all in agreement that we do have to pronounce his name "weiner"?

Jeff (of undergraduates): "They cling to them like bad metaphors in an ocean of darkness." 

Great Moments in Arabic Class:

• "Why can't 3 and 5 make love together?"
• "Louder. Let Woodward know you're learning Arabic!"
• "I'm here to teach you Arabic, not to teach you what's your name."
• "The hamza, she likes the alif. He's like a little chair, she comes and sits down."
• "You have to put them dot!" (of Arabic handwriting)
• "Man, you supposed to help the lady! Otherwise, Anthony, nobody will..." (trails off ominously)
• "Don't sign anyone else in. Not even she says to you sign me in, I buy you a pizza. Not even for 3 toppings." (Of class policies. I feel this is sage advice for all students.)
• "Creativity is another way of saying "lying.""
• "There's too many Jesus in the world! You're not the first Jesus!" (to an entitled student)
• "You concluded yourself."
• "Shed some effort!" (to lazy student. also sage and timeless advice.)
• "You poison the atmosphere, cousin." (same freaking entitled student)
• "That's the stuff, that's the juice there."
• "3lay-ee (on me, I've got it) for when your buddy over there, he's a cheap-ass."
• "Don't think yourself like you're hip and you know all the Arabic thing."

Instructor: "You know, the English story with the sword in the rock?"

Student: "Alexander the Great?"

Me: "Alexander was in Greece and Persia."

Student: "Same thing."

Jeff (Writing Machines): "I bring you a philosophy of love."

Jeff (Writing Machines): "Jurassic Park is the pomo Frankenstein."

Jeff (Writing Machines): "I've already deconstructed a bunch of stuff. But have I become a subject?" And also, "You're a void! But, hey, so are all of us!"

Jeff (Writing Machines): "We want to avoid dancing lobster-flation."

Jeff (Writing Machines): "The truth is there IS a tiny man in your brain; he has a chair, with levers."

Jeff (Practicum): "We're all like 'But my students still don't understand the nature of Evil!'"

Jason (WM): "2 equals 2 because 2 says so."

Fellow GTA watching a Prezi presentation: "How did you make your wiki turn?"

Jeff (Writing Machines): (Of Steigler) "I don't know how long he was in prison. It was in France, so probably just for a few days. Take that, France."

Jeff (Writing Machines): "We're going to smoke corn cob pipes. It's going to be awesome."

Jeff (Writing Machines): "What business are you in? The business of revolution!"

Fellow GTA: "We got a shitload of Others."

Fellow GTA: "If you look at the evolution of man, it stretches out millions and billions of years." (Thus confirming everything the hard sciences thinks about us...)

Jeff (Practicum): (Of grading quizzes) "I call them smiles instead of points. Even 3 out of 10 smiles sounds good."

Jeff (Writing Machines): "Why *are* 2 goats worth a bed?" And later "Watching a baby is like being jabbed with a needle."

Jeff (Practicum): "You can succeed with OECEEDA." (On why our current outcomes don't make a pithy syllabus line.)

Jeff (Writing Machines): "a Foucaultian love basket" and "a nonstop mystery train"

Ken (Intro to Grad Studies): "Everything's avant-guard now! Even your carpet!"

Ken (Intro to Grad Studies): "It's the opposite of whatever you think - I'm Zizek!"

I don't speak up

I am known for not speaking up in classes. I've been called out by at least two professors for this behavior, sometimes in very public ways. It's shaming - an affectionate shaming, but still a shaming.

I don't want to suggest here that no one should talk, or that it's bad to share in classes. But I do think the gendered bullshit built into this shaming is worth considering. There are only so many ways to speak up in a classroom setting, and increasingly, as you move into upper level humanities classes, those ways involve making a claim, arguing with or questioning someone else's claims. This confrontational dynamic is, whether I like it or not, coded masculine. Studies indicate that women are socialized to take turns, to be considerate, to defer and make peace. Men are encouraged to be aggressive, to take a stand. I feel like in some ways the charge of "not speaking up" is a charge of "not acting like a man."

This is not a complicated claim, or a new one. But it is one that's hitting me especially hard right now, as I sit in a summer seminar with 26 other scholars in my field. In no way am I saying that the conversation is dominated by male voices, although I suspect that if I kept track I'd find that they speak disproportionately, given that there are more women than men in the room. But I have noticed some things about how we speak. The women in the room are careful to wait their turn, and when they don't, or when the speaking rhythm of multiple people fails, they are likely to apologize directly to the person they (intentionally or unintentionally) interrupted. The men in this room are far less likely to do so. The man to my right, in fact, strains like a puppy on a leash as someone else speaks. At every clause, every microsecond of pause, he begins to speak, only breaking off when it becomes obvious that the other person is not yet finished. He leans forward, his mouth open, the words already on his lips.

Why is this taken as engagement? Why is listening not as much a way of being in a conversation?

As reticent as I am, I've been tempted to say to him, "you have spoken more than anyone else in this room today. Let her finish what she's saying or I'm going to bludgeon you with your own MacBook."

I think often my silence is taken as apathy, or confusion. It is assumed that I have nothing to say. And, again, I don't want to pretend that this isn't a problem or mine, that I don't need to make better use of my voice, to share and participate. But I also want to say, in my defense, that I find this distasteful. I'm not willing to speak up if it means being so convinced of the importance of my own words that I need to get them out as quickly as possible, even at the expense of letting someone else get their own words out. I think we need, as scholars and instructors, to stop rewarding students who interrupt aggressively - and student, but perhaps especially female students, who are already far more likely to be interrupted all day every day than their male counterparts.

cynicism wins again!

in the last week, i have seen some of my facebook friends responding with dismay and/or outrage to the news that the pope thinks people who don't have children are selfish.

i'm not one of them, though. not because i agree with him, but because i don't think i ever really warmed to this guy. i can see some of my spiritual-but-not-religious or former-catholic friends reacting as if a friend has betrayed them, as if a kindly father-figure has slapped them. they are, not surprisingly, the same people who have been talking about how awesome this pope is. and all along, i guess, i just didn't buy it.

it's not that i'm sooo worldly and sophisticated. i voted for the green party. i think it's safe to say that i have some idealism. but what i'm not, i suppose, is very trusting. i remember when obama first got elected, and the hope people had, rather than inspiring me, depressed me. i felt at the time that he wouldn't be able to accomplish all he wanted to (who does?) and that he would be held to a higher standard than a white guy (so, had she won, hilary would have been in the same boat) and the result was likely to be a backlash of disappointment. i admit things weren't as dire as i predicted, but in a lot of ways that happened. the 2010 primaries were pathetic. people were already losing momentum.

so when everyone was all, oh, francis is my best friend, i just kind of thought, 'well, it could be worse than him, i guess.' and now the glorious fruit of my distance and apathy has come home to save me.

i mean, come on. he's still a relatively sheltered old man who will himself never have to actually grapple with things like birth control, marriage equality, and family planning. are we really this upset because someone who knows NOTHING about the decision to have children has opinions on it that we disagree with? who cares what pope francis says about this?

well, i mean, obviously catholic people care. but why do the people i'm thinking of here care?

i could claim that anyone who seeks out fertility treatment instead of adoption is selfish. in fact, i could claim that anyone who brings another child into the world when there are children already here to be loved and cared for is selfish. why is the continuance of your own DNA more important than the well-being of a living child? if i felt like being really radical, i could say that anyone who doesn't adopt animals, which are also living things, is selfish.

my point is not to rebut him. i'm not making any of those claims, because i think they are all complicated issues and i think it's not my place to tell someone how to make their family (although i obviously have opinions on that). i'm just genuinely interested in this hurt reaction to the entirely subjective opinions of a well-meaning but fallible human. 

unrecognizable

i seem to remember that before i actually went through with the wedding, i decided that i would be very cool and laid-back about the Name Issue. i determined that while i would not be changing my name, i would not correct people who mistakenly and unenlightenedly just assumed that i had.

i assume that no one is surprised to hear that i have not been able to make good on this resolution.

in my defense, this started *at the reception* when even though T told someone who was supposedly relaying information to the dj that my name was the same, i was still announced with his name. and then we had 100+ cards to open, and it was immediately apparent that for most people, i had ceased to exist as my own person. i made piles. people who listed us as Mr and Mrs T, people who gave us both first names but with his last name, and finally people who either hedged their bets by not writing a last name, or who listed us both accurately. this last pile was pathetically small.

and over the last two months, i have become increasingly hostile about this. in some ways, this surprises me. i have never felt particularly proud of my last name. i am named, like most children, for my father, as if i and my mother belong to him. he is a negligent man, and a drunk who denies that his drinking scarred our childhoods. his father was an abusive, and abused, man. his sister, my aunt, does not speak to me because i "lived in sin" a decade ago. i obviously feel no clan pride, no need to be known by his name. and yet, when people assume i have taken T's name, i am furious.

there are, obviously, no good choices here. i can belong to one penis, or to another penis. if i keep my name, it makes my life easier with respect to paperwork, identification, my academic career, etc. if i don't keep my name, it makes my life easier with respect to the expectations and assumptions of the unthinking, uncaring human beings i am bombarded with every week, if not every day. and i knew this ahead of time, which is why i had decided to be cool about all of it.

but then things happen, and i respond in ways that could not be described as cool. i crossed out the "mrs" on a card addressed to mr and mrs T. i had to work very hard to resist the impulse to throw away another card from his parents, who in fact KNOW that i kept my name, but listed me with his anyway.

and then there's what happened this week at dance. which sounds, unfortunately, as if i'm about to relate something very dramatic. i'm not. some guy that T knows from playing soccer showed up this week at dance, and he was introduced to everyone, and then i promptly forgot about him. nothing personal, i guess; i didn't have a reason to think about him. since MR is leaving, it's unclear whose job is what now at dance, and i wanted to keep talking about how things work with her, rather than make conversation with a stranger. but then, later, he asked me to dance. he came up behind me and said "Mrs. X, will you dance with me?" inappropriately, i froze up. i just stood there, not knowing what to do or how to react. i think there was some vague notion in my mind about correcting him, but not thinking it was worth it, but also not wanting to let it stand.

maybe this is common. i wanted to ask some of my other married female friends, but in fact i can't think of any who didn't take a new name, at least in hyphenated form. i suppose that should tell me something, that even in academia, my closest friends and contemporaries changed their names.

by this time, though, i've stood in confused silence for about 5 seconds, and so the guy said something like you don't want to dance. and i said something awkward and frowning like i'm not accustomed to being called that. and he *grinned* at me and said "I thought I'd surprise you with that." as if he'd given me a treat or done me a favor. as if he expected that it would give me a thrill to have my identity subsumed in someone else.

i need to pause here, because i recognize, first, that i had other reasons not to be thrilled with this guy. he tried to give me dance lessons on the floor, because i didn't recognize the things he was doing - which, in my defense, is because they were choreographed sinatra moves, which must be recognized, not led. most of the leads i dance with rely on their ability to lead, not on my ability to memorize moves. also, the first time you meet/dance with someone is not the time or place for a semi-humiliated on-the-floor dance lesson. and at the end of the dance he said, consideringly, "i'll dance with you again, for sure." dude. don't do me any favors. but i also need to pause because i recognize that i'm being potentially offensive. i have to assume that my friends took those names for good reasons, and that they feel things like pride and happiness. i don't want to say anyone who feels that way is wrong, but at the same time i do think it's wrong for anyone to *assume* that that's what is felt.

in one of the amy-pond seasons of doctor who, there's a scene where the doctor calls her "amy williams." and this is supposed to be a MOMENT, a recognition of something. and if it were simply him acknowledging that he's treated her as static, as *his*, and now he's seeing that she's changed, that she isn't his to define, that would be great. he could, even if sort of condescendingly, give her back to herself. but he doesn't. he gives her to rory, to her husband. she isn't his, because now she belongs to another man. it was an awful moment, and i hated it when i watched it. and i hate it when it happens.

if i were any other woman, this guy at dance would have asked me to dance, and introduced himself, and i would have introduced myself. and we would have taken each other that way, in the ways that we chose to present ourselves. but instead i was denied that, and i feel, in those moments, unrecognized and unrecognizable.

i've gotten comments over the years for referring to my partners as partners or companions. i still do it, sometimes. and, sure, there's a perverse part of me that enjoys watching people try to figure out what that means about my living arrangements, my sexual preferences. but a lot of it genuinely is my belief that those things are irrelevant to whatever situation i'm in. when legal papers and doctors' forms ask me if i'm married, i don't jerk them around. but in small talk, those things aren't what i'm here as. i'm here as someone talking to you about the music or about our work at the same place, not as my history of bedmates or as the legal contracts i've entered into. do you need to know if i'm in bankruptcy as well? we're uncomfortable prying into religious convictions and political affiliations, but i'm expected to perform the most intimate details of my life for you? people tell me i'm being difficult, and okay, i'll own that. and they ask me why i don't just make things easier, stop confusing people. is it really so confusing to need to ask someone their name? is it so upsetting to think that maybe you don't actually need to know immediately whether i like boys or girls or both or neither, whether i have a civil union or a marriage or a lease with someone else?

i know that one way or another i'm going to need to come up with an approach to this that works for me, something better than standing in annoyed uncertainty. but it seems obvious to me that doing "the easy thing" is nothing more than buying simplicity for others at my own expense, at the cost of trying to take this ready-made identity with all its cultural baggage and recognize myself in it. and i'm really not a generous enough person for that.

on fear and ferguson

after grading, and putting in 1/2 of the research hour i'm trying to make myself adhere to from now on, i'm sitting around watching the third (of *five*) pirates of the caribbean movies. in my pajamas. living in the world i woke up to, this feels selfishly indulgent.

i fell asleep early last night, because my brain is still making the slow transition from istanbul time to detroit time, and when i woke up a grand jury had failed to indict a police officer for shooting (another) young man whose only crime was looking suspicious in a culture where what looks suspicious is unfairly skewed by race and class.

while i was in istanbul i read this article. which tells the story of a 12-year-old girl, "mistaken" for a prostitute, beaten within an inch of her life, and abandoned at a hospital but a group of police officers, one of which would go on to win an officer of the year award in his later career. i realize it's shitty research to have one source to prove a point, but i don't think i really need to slog through the heartbreaking work of providing link after link to show that men of color, and women (mostly, but not exclusively of color) and the poor (of all colors, but since poverty disproportionately impacts people of color, we can do the math on that) are subject to treatment by police officers that is appalling and criminal. and nothing happens.

i'm indulgently, almost destructively, watching this stupid movie instead of doing something because i literally do not know what to do. a quick glance at facebook only makes me angry, miserable, and heartbroken by turns.

someone i went to graduate school with encourages us all to stop focusing on what's wrong with the world and start focusing on what's right. which is exactly what i'd expect from someone i largely regarded, even at the time, as sheltered and entitled. is this not the close cousin of the rhetoric religion has used to sucker the downtrodden into submission? bear the sorrows of this world, as the next will be better. turn away from the injustices of this world and focus on promoting the justices, in hope of making a better world tomorrow.

maybe, idiot that i take this person for, they are correct. but i can't do it. there is an angry core to me, that believes some people are so awful that the world is better off without them, and that hopes for celestial punishment for some crimes, and that cannot just ignore this. i do not think we can move on without justice being done. more importantly, since we could quibble about justice, i don't believe we *can* change this culture without making it pointedly, perhaps brutally clear that this bullshit will not stand. that there will be consequences.

a woman i was friends of a sort with in cincinnati talks about how awful the protestors showing the local businesses of ferguson "what justice really means to them" in a tone of sanctimonious disgust. as if the grand jury, the people of ferguson, or any other city in america, are somehow the real victims here, because of the inappropriate response of the protestors. as if property damage is somehow an UNREASONABLE or DISPROPORTIONATE response to the refusal to charge a man with the unnecessary death of another human being. perhaps you can guess where i stand on that issue. this post has been met with a flurry of comments about how "disgusting" it is. and i agree - it is disgusting, the complete lack of compassion these people feel good about displaying on the internet.

and yet, while i sympathize with ferguson protestors, i can't seem to make myself feel inspired to protest. a couple of other facebook friends mention protests in support of ferguson, happening in detroit, or on wayne state's campus. and as a staunch supporter and veteran of occupy, i should be there, i should want to be there, i should see the point of being there.

but instead i feel helpless in the face of this. what can i do? what can anyone do? our culture reveres police officers. i see bumper stickers that say "execute cop killers." it is a common belief that those who fear or distrust police (of which i am one) are themselves criminals. how do you fight that? how do you fight the belief that regular fucking people, to say nothing of cops, have the *right* to stand their ground, against whatever they perceive as a threat. it becomes a sort of maddening composition class, where students say, mealy-mouthed, that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion and no one can tell you what to think. who am i to say someone was or wasn't feeling threatened? we believe this. we believed, when trayvon martin died, that protecting middle class *property* from the possibility of a robbery attempt is justification for ending someone's life. how do you fight that? with protest - when everyone who needs convincing already believes that protestors are lazy, whining idealists (at best) or criminals (at worst)?

i'm afraid of finding that all i can do is what i already do. jump to obey when i meet a police officer. duck and stay out of their way. because that's no solution either.

when i was in my early 20s, i was drinking and smoking (let's say cigarettes, sure) with some friends, when the police pulled a man over in front of my house. what he had done, i do not know, but they subdued him with violence, and when the flickering lights finally attracted our attention they were wrestling him, cuffed and bleeding, to sit on the sidewalk. there were, as there often were in my neighborhood, about 4 police cars present to subdue one man. we weren't unfamiliar with them. they'd been to visit my neighbors several times in force. my neighborhood was a fairly even mix of hispanic, white, and black, uniformly poor. there were worse neighborhoods, and probably even more depressing ones, but it was the sort of grubby, threadbare place i've lived in most of my adult life. fast food and liquor stores and pawn shops. the empty skeleton of a failed mall, being taken over by a walmart more depressing even than the mall's corpse had been. so we'd met the cops. and we'd heard of them roughing up others in our neighborhood. so while i never encountered any real violence from them, especially of the kind that people of color have to worry about constantly, i had reason to fear them. we stood at the window for several minutes, until, after one of the officers glanced our way several times, one of my friends began to demand that we move away. i can't recall if we were over 21 - probably. most of us were, anyway, and we were drinking in a private home. and yet i felt the fear in his voice echo through me, and none of us argued with him. we were afraid, in our home, of attracting their attention, of letting them see we were watching them. we felt, i felt at occupy, i STILL feel, that they could abuse us for watching and there would be no consequences. if i protested their treatment, i would be dissected in the court of public opinion - a girl in mannish clothes, with friends with police records, who was sexually promiscuous and had enjoyed the favors of both men and women. a girl in a bad neighborhood, drinking, and smoking with two of those record-bearing friends. and so damage to our home, or to our bodies, would have been justified.

wael ghonim said of egypt's part in the arab spring that the hardest thing was fighting the fear people had been living under for decades, making them feel like exposing themselves could bring anything except swift punishment. with less to fear than he had, i have still had a lifetime of conditioning. and so i came away from the window. and i know that that's what i'm doing now. but i don't know what else to do. i don't know how to fight this.

the weight of guilt

at this point i have at least three entries in draft form sitting on this blog, ideas that just haven't gone anywhere yet. or that have gone somewhere in my head, but so far my head hasn't made my body physically finish them.

they are scholarly. they are about health care, and procedural rhetoric. some of them even involve citations and/or namedropping.

instead of finishing them, i will tell you that i was baptized last sunday. i feel many things about this, ranging from nothing to calm acceptance to anger to incredible guilt. i was, i  thought, prepared for this step. now that i am on the other side of it, though, i'm not sure i was.

i say this in spite of the fact that last sunday was, in quite a few ways, a good day. i love, and felt loved by, my family at st. leo's. there were humorous, and wonderful moments. when sr sue told me i was being a "really good sport" about all the fuss and pageantry. when sr maryfran welcomed me to the ranks of the "intellectual, discontent thinking women" of the faith. being hugged by simply everyone. hearing keir and eric sing. it was, in the most physical possible sense, a day with moments of feelings in communion with the members of my parish.

but i am also struggling with it. i fear that i kidded myself about my ability to do this with an open heart. i feel a little like i agreed to lean over the railing and look over the cliff and at some point i fell, and then momentum took over. i kept going because there wasn't a way to halt things.

but i think, given time, i could deal with that. i made a decision, the way you decide to go to one school or another, take one job or another, and then you make peace, even if with occasional regret, about that decision.

but then wednesday my grandfather died. you need to understand that he was special to me, that my mom's parents were and are very much part of our lives. we saw more of grandma than mom, most of the time. and because my dad was so distant, my uncle and grandfather were in some ways our best experience of adult male parents. i don't believe, i *don't* believe children "need a dad", but i do think they need caring adults, and i do think it's useful for them to see examples of good men and women. and he was our example of a good man, always. he was quiet, and i never saw him angry, but he was a funny man, a brilliant story-teller. he was patient and wry and kind. i tell everyone that he never, that i can recall, told me he loved me, but i have never once doubted it. no one who loved him doubted that he loved them back.

he and my grandmother were jehovah's witnesses. i have never been sure how much poppy believed. perhaps quite a bit. he never tried to convert us, as grandma did, but he was a regular attendant at the hall, and i know that going mattered to him. i know that it pains my grandmother that we are not witnesses, and it pains her that this upcoming wedding will be in a catholic church. i know, in my rational brain, that his death and this baptism are not connected, and yet it is hard for me not to confuse my feelings about them.

i am the sort of person who is perverse for no reason. and i am the sort of person who makes her own, weird code and lives by it. when i was in high school, i was asked by someone i was seeing to stop speaking to another person. there was nothing going on with this other person, and in fact, i don't think we were particularly close, but i refused. i decided that the person who should win was the one not issuing a ridiculous ultimatum, and i enraged my then-boyfriend by telling him it would never happen. i am reasonably sure that that isn't the only reason that relationship didn't work out.

as jehovah's witnesses, my grandparents actually *were* in the minority that christians like to pretend they are in. witnesses are subjected to ugly stereotypes and misinformation about what they believe. they are "happy birthday"ed and "merry christmas"ed by people who treat their very real and very valid christianity like it is an offense when they do not respond, or if they try to explain why they do not respond. anyone who thinks this isn't a christian nation should grow up a witness. i spent my childhood being yelled at by substitute teachers for not saying the pledge of allegiance, and being picked up early from school by my grandmother because the class was having a halloween or christmas party. i was made to explain to my 3rd grade class why i don't celebrate christmas. and like many people who live as a minority in a world run by majorities, they were tactful. they didn't enforce their dinner prayers on guests. they didn't talk about their faith to anyone who didn't want to listen. they would knock, as witnesses do, on your door, but they waited to be invited inside.

the problem is that i feel like i lied when i was being baptized. i am a skeptic at the best of times, and yet i said that i believe a number of things that either i am not sure i do believe or that i am quite sure i do not believe. and in the face of my grandfather's dying, and now his death, i have believed even less. his suffering seems to me senseless, and nothing anyone says, no matter how kindly meant, is comforting to me. we went to church in louisville, sunday, and i raged at the discussion of all souls' and what it means. the next morning, at the funeral yesterday, i raged again listening to the Brother J deliver a talk about how my grandfather would be in the new system. T asked me if i wanted to pray for him, and i couldn't. i couldn't believe it mattered, and i couldn't even make myself do it, as i sometimes do, as a way of centering myself and hoping. i could not think about anything except anger and pain. it is impossible for me, right now, to be anything but an atheist, and an atheist whose skin is scraped raw by what are for me, meaningless, comfortless, insensitive words about fairy tales.

i find myself thinking, if i had to lie, why couldn't i have lied for them? i know this is stupid. as near as i can tell, my grandfather was never unduly bothered by my not being a witness. and of course he never knew that 3 days before his death i was betraying everything he and my grandmother raised my mom to believe in. it is unreasonable to feel guilty about this, but the unalterable fact is that i do. i feel like i bowed, or caved in. i feel like somewhere in all of this there was a soft ultimatum, unspoken, and i chose the wrong side of it.

but mostly, i feel worn and bereft. i have acquired, expensively, perhaps, a loyalty to something that hangs responsibilities on me and forces me to drag them around. and, today at least, i doubt my ability to bear up under that, because i feel hollowed out by loss. i feel like something inside me went down into the dark with him and i don't know how to recover from this maiming.

50 shades of the cave bear

since i became a doctor, i have done many things which could be described, generously, as self-indulgent. one of them was to pull out all my quilting stuff, spread it around my apartment, and work on projects i haven't touched since i first became a masters student.

but the other thing has been to read trash. lately, i have been reading a lot of things (both fiction and non-fiction) about the tudors, because that's always been a particularly fascinating piece of british history for me. but in between and around that, i have been reading the "earth's chilldren" books, or as they are better known, the clan of the cave bear and oh, she wrote 5 other books? 

let me confess, at this point, that i have actually read these books before. i read them in high school, and gathered little except that they were full of sex. i read them again, more recently, as someone with sexual experience and giggled my way through most of the sex scenes, which are unrealistic, to say the least. but even more recently, because i have trouble sleeping at night, i have been reading them again.

it is safe to say that the most fascinating parts of these books are her guesses and/or depictions about how early humans would have lived. there's clearly a lot of research that went into these books, significantly more work than goes into your average romance novel or sex film, i suspect. and i enjoy reading about building boats and houses made out of mammoth bones. i like reading about flint knapping, apparently.

but i am also, on my third read, far more critical of the books, both as texts and as rhetorical artifacts.

the Craft Criticisms are perhaps the easiest to deal with, so i will start there. these books become incredibly tedious at a certain point. part of this can be chalked up to what my sister always called "The Baby-Sitters' Club Dilemma." as kids, we read these books, which were a series, but which also wanted to allow for new readers to enter at any point. this meant that the entire second chapter was inevitably dedicated to describing the origins of the club and the backstories of the members - her solution after two or three books was simply to skip the second chapter. so at times the EC books fall, understandably, victim to this.

less understandably, the books are also tedious because of the plot. when ayla lives alone, we get tired of her dwelling on past events, but after she meets other people like herself... every person she meets notices a) her stunning beauty, b) her strange accent, and c) her perceptiveness and/or mystical powers. because she's traveling with horses (and later a wolf) at a time when no one else has domesticated animals, people also notice those. and so, over and over, we listen to ayla and jondalar (the guy she chooses...more on that idiocy) explain where the horses and wolf come from. over and over we watch people marvel at her "inventions" - a faster way of making fire, pack baskets for the horses to carry, a needle, a spear-thrower (admittedly, jondalar invents this, but only because of ayla). as well, over and over, people notice that she is a skilled healer and wonder to themselves and aloud about her strange accent.

inevitably, this leads to the revelation that she was raised by neaderthal, and inevitably someone will react with outrage and disgust (compounded when they discover she bore a child of mixed blood while living with them). all of this can be entertaining a couple times, but it quickly gets boring. unfortunately, in the 4th book, she and jondalar start traveling back to his home, so there's Traveling and then there's Meeting New People. that's it. you might think the Traveling is better, especially if you are a fan of the LOTR books and enjoy reading about people who are trying to find shelter and food. but without orcs and nazgul and stuff chasing them, ayla and jondalar need other varieties of tension. these are often very artificial.

as an example, in the fourth book (the easiest one to pick on) we are treated to the riveting drama of jondalar becoming annoyed with Wolf, the wolf who travels with them. in spite of the fact that in the third book jondalar adores Wolf, who is a source of comfort to him, and in spite of the fact that we have already witnessed the animal being helpful, he inexplicably decides that the wolf is useless and annoying (probably because he's being a demanding jerk about this traveling - more on that). he makes snide comments, and then ayla gets hurt because she loves Wolf. eventually, obviously, jondalar realizes that Wolf is an asset, and gets over himself. i know, you were on the edge of your seat waiting to find out about that one. so some of this is just poor pacing, or lack of an innovative plot.

but then there's jondalar himself, who deserves his own section. in the second book, when we aren't watching ayla struggle to survive, work through her trauma at losing her entire clan and child, and worry that she will never meet people who will accept her and allow her to become a mother and wife (her fondest desire), we are traveling with jondalar and his brother. this journey, by the way, is just for fun, a sowing of wild oats. jondalar is enjoying himself, but secretly misses his home and is afraid his brother will never return. however, he is also on this trip to avoid a girl he has been courting, but doesn't love. and man, does he whine about that.

the contrast here is...well, it makes me hate him. ayla is struggling to *survive* and dealing with isolation of a sort that would make most people crazy, and jondalar is fighting tears as he whines to his brother about how he can't fall in love. even *worse*, every girl he meets seems to fall in love with him. young, impressionable girls love him. a young widowed mother who refuses his perfunctory proposal because she senses he doesn't love her and is afraid she would grow to hate him. (this, of course, is jondalar's tragedy, not hers or her son's.) the woman he left at home loves him. etc. but none of these women do it for him, partly because he finds sex with them dissatisfying. for this is jondalar's Most Overwhelming Tragedy - that he must hold back with these women, who can't "receive all of him." are you kidding me? in the days of the woolly mammoths, we have the first Emo Cliche, and he is whining about how he can't love all the women who love him and how his dick is too big.

(it's worth mentioning that everyone around him thinks jondalar is a really great guy - strong, good-looking, magnetic, etc. they also think this of ayla, who seems to have no flaws. her one thing is that we're told she can't sing well, but we're also told that people like listening to her voice. so what does that mean? that she has an unusual-but-pleasant singing voice that no everyone enjoys? or that she really can't sing but she's hot so everyone doesn't notice? this perfection is exactly why i despised superman for years.)

when he meets ayla, he adores her, but cultural misunderstandings stop them from being together for a time. but then, of course, he falls in love with her. and, i mean, why wouldn't he? she's tall, strong, and beautiful, although not as tall and strong as he is, and she doesn't believe she's beautiful. she was raised in a culture where women are taught to anticipate the needs of men, respect their speech and wishes, and be ready at any moment to "relieve their needs." so what's not to like? her natural independence has led her to teach herself to hunt and create tools, which were unwomanly for her people, but they apparently only taught her to rebel against stereotypes which might have made her a burden to jondalar. she's ideal. never clingy, but always ready to comfort him or sleep with him. independent, and solicitous, but almost disgustingly grateful if he so much as cleans a plate off for her.

when they meet other people for the first time, a group of mammoth hunters, one of them is a charismatic, sensitive, funny, handsome, talented black guy who is also a carver. jondalar is, to be honest, none of these things, except maybe handsome. we're told he's charismatic, but if no one told me, i wouldn't know. ranec also loves ayla, and asks her to sleep with him. which she does, of course, because she's been raised to obey men all the time. let me be clear here. jondalar KNOWS this, but doesn't explain to her that she's always allowed to say no to anyone, because it's her body. an old guy at the mammoth hunter camp finally tells her this, after she's already slept with ranec and jondalar is pissed at them both. over the course of the winter, ranec pursues her by making her smile, asking if he can help her, giving her gifts of carvings, and asking her to become his officially recognized mate. jondalar mostly avoids her or says shitty things, although once he *forces* her when they are alone together (and so, first, it's disgusting that he believes he raped her, but then he won't even listen to her as she tries to tell him that nothing they just did was against her will). he's not able to compete with ranec's wit and charm, nor has he ever offered to "marry" her, but ayla still can't stop thinking about him. of course, eventually, she decides to be with him, leaving ranec heartbroken.

it's worth a note about all the sex. i'm not saying anything innovative here - these are romance novels with flint knapping. as an experienced woman, i don't think these books do me any harm. but i think back to my teenage self, and i'm relieved she never paid enough attention to think this is what sex is meant to be like. every time, jondalar can barely control himself because he's so turned on just by the look and feel of her. he's never too drunk to finish. he never finishes too soon and she has to sigh and tell him it's no big deal while being frustrated. she never fails to feel ecstasy at his slightest touch. they are perfectly attracted to one another, they always please one another. nothing is ever awkward. this is *not* what sex is like in my experience.

there's also the fact that jondalar finds such joy in her (and falls in love with her, perhaps) because she's the first woman who's ever been able to "take all of him." let me be clear here: he loves her for her depth, and this isn't another way of saying he loves her for her mind. 

i don't want to sound like sexual chemistry isn't crucial in a relationship. i believe it is. i believe that when it's lacking, especially if it isn't talked about, that relationship is always open to someone who can bring excitement as well as love, respect, and comfort. but these books just go further than i can stomach. in one, utterly pointless, completely banal scene she asks jondalar after sex how he "always knows" what she "really wants." how, even when she thinks she wants (for instance) a slow, romantic encounter, does he instinctively know that she actually wants to be taken hard and fast and thus manages to both surprise and utterly satisfy her?

are you kidding me?

but then there's also the fact that the books occasionally feel too much like my actual life. ayla is a misfit who struggles to defines herself against a culture that constricts her, and she eventually is adopted by a group of people who love and appreciate her for who she is, and who are both living in the region she is familiar with, and are accepting of her background. they even have a child of mixed blood living with them, and after some initial tension they accept that the neanderthal are people like themselves and worthy of respect.

but jondalar wants to go home. even though he's been ashamed of her background. even though he's not sure his people and family will accept her. he considers telling her he will stay with her and her adopted family, but realizes he can't do it. and so all of the tedium of book four is because jondalar wants to go home. his irritation with Wolf is in large part because he cannot handle any delay at all, anything that keeps him away from his family. this is mostly his mom, really. his dad is portrayed as a good guy, but a little shiftless, while he and his brother can't say enough about how great their mom is. she's a cave leader. she was a great hunter once. she's so great. he has siblings, but we hear less about them. we never hear about friends. ...actually, i'm just now realizing how weird it is that this guy is so desperate to get home. he's been away years and his mom could be dead by now, and he seems to have no other attachments. he has a lot invested in himself as a member of his culture, but, again, it's not always obvious why.

ayla was raised with the numerous gods of the neaderthal, and when she talks about her beliefs in totem spirits and so forth, you can see that jondalar finds this all baffling, a little interesting, a little embarrassing. he tells her, on several occasions, that the worship of the mother-goddess is "for everyone." he's pleased when she adopts his faith, but doesn't really allow himself to be influenced by hers. (also, he wants her to honor the mother as he does, but then when she becomes a sort of priestess later, he finds that inconvenient as hell. this guy is Never Happy.) her beliefs are cool and all, but not ultimately important because he can fit them neatly under the umbrella of the mother and so already accounted for by his religion. 

so, you know, i'm not a flawless beauty who is utterly independent and yet utterly submissive to men, obviously. nor am i being hounded across prehistoric europe by a sullen, unappealing man tied to his mom's apron strings (when we meet this woman, for the record, she actually is pretty nice, but nowhere near as clingy as jondalar. possibly she was glad to be rid of him for a bit?) but the whole drama of whose world to live in, whose wishes should be dominant, occasionally feels a little too much like my conversations with T. and if it's annoying in a book, why should it be any less annoying in life?

admittedly, this last is the least of my complaints. and i could add to this list. there's the fact that ayla begins to suspect that babies come from sex and not from the mixing of spirits or essences or whatever and in insisting over and over that children "belong" to men as well as women brings about patriarchy. but what else could we expect from a "perfect" woman?

i could bitch more about this, but i've probably already lost the respect of everyone around me, by revealing that i've spent my post-doctoral break reading these books, and a perfectly good monday morning writing about them.