Good-bye, 2008!

Dear 2008,

Thanks for a great year! This year I have:

- learned to like olives
- cooked my first artichoke and my first celery root
- learned to poach an egg
- let go of a stressful relationship
- been there for a friend
- done my first mail merge
- finished coursework for my ph.d
- met someone who is beautiful, generous and kind
- been completely broke
- returned to my natural hair color
- begun this blog
- introspected

Many thanks and much love to everyone who contributed to the memories above listed! And thanks and warm love to everyone who contributed to memories I have forgotten or left out. Thanks and love all around!

thoughts for sharing

Staying soft.

“Stay soft Sarah G.” was the implied refrain in Sarah's mind earlier this fall, and I've been reminding myself of it regularly, applying it to myself. Stay soft, kristy. Don't let yourself grow defensive. Don't let yourself give up, don't let yourself harshly judge. Stay soft. Stay open. Stay calm and stay loving. Though I still think that Mrs. Drummer's concern for me and my prickles could have been left unsaid or differently said, I wonder, now, whether there may have been something to that. Possibly not at that time – I think I needed confidence at that time – but these past years.

Patience

Is exhausting. Trying to remain patient and soft and generous is hard work. Good work but hard. Hard because it is moral in the way Bauman discusses – there is no measure against which I might measure myself. There is no end to patience, there is no goal. There is no minimum level above which my obligation eases. No. At every moment I am responsible for my actions and for my responses, and at every moment I must love better than I know how.

Being soft.

I have been so emotional lately. Weird. Cried over my Glamour magazine (the 31 days of giving, and the woman of the year awards.). Cried over the Christmas cd Hugh Miller made for me a few years back (the poor cat! and the poor mouse – the poor lucky mouse. and the generosity and futility of the cat's gift - why this mouse? it will die like everything else and probably sooner rather than later. but the cat chose to be responsible. and that precisely is moral.) In particular, generosity moves me more deeply than I remember it having done.

Sleeping

I've been having the hardest time getting out of bed lately. I am quite sure that it has to do with the enormity of the dissertation I am trying to prepare to write. If I had a plan ... If I had a comfortable chair ... If I had a hot breakfast waiting for me ... If I had laundry money ... If I knew what I would write ... If it weren't so cold ... If I didn't have to shower ... If there was coffee hot and waiting ... If ... If ... If ...

It seems as though I must be 'all set' before I could possibly begin. If I write half of my dissertation before I get a comfortable chair, it seems I must start over – how much better would my first half have been/could become if only it were written in the comfortable chair! And since I cannot begin (because I am not 'all set'), I may as well stay in bed where it is warm, where I can daydream, where cat is curled up, where it is soft, where it is dark, where nothing is expected.

Dear Chicago,

Dear Owners of Property,

Please salt your sidewalks *promptly* after snow/sleet/freezing rain. Some of us use the sidewalks for our primary mode of transportation and trying to walk on ice is sufficient to ruin our days. Think of us.

Dear Drivers of Cars and Other Motor Vehicles,

Please look both ways before turning or before proceeding after a stop sign. There are pedestrians on your right you simply did not see because you were so busy making sure there were no cars coming from your left. I have a bright red jacket and a bright orange one. This is on purpose. But still, you don't see me. Please look! Otherwise you will be repaying my student loans.

love,

kristy

belated response

Dear _

You asked me some months ago "How can I love you better, friend?"

I still haven't responded.

This is not for lack of desire to respond; I keep returning the question and finding that I don't know what to say. And it occurred to me the other day that, if you must ask and if I cannot respond, then perhaps I have not made myself sufficiently open and available to you, as a friend.

So here is my response: I am sorry. I am sorry for not having taken more time, over all of these years, to be open and available to and communicative with you. I am sorry for not sharing myself with you so that you could see this person I am and this person I am becoming. I am sorry for having assumed that the differences and the distances between us made communication too difficult. I am sorry for not being brave enough and determined enough to be loving and open and flexible and patient.

being patient. and patient. and more patience

I think if I ever have children, I will name them Patience and Prudence. Then, whenever I have to interact with them (which would probably be often), I would be (gently) reminded to be patient. and prudent.

I suppose that would work just as well with dogs and cats, too.

Things I have not done:

-Finished (began?) my dissertation proposal
-Put away my laundry
-Ironed
-Lowered the storm windows
-Written abstracts for the chapters of DTM's book
-Made soup
-Gone grocery shopping

Things I have done:

-Sent lists to HM
-gossiped
-sent a petulant text message
-dishes
-made hot chocolate
-asked for - and received - advice
-sulked
-talked to my mother
-gotten drunk
-regretted drunkenness
-resolved

Things I will do:

-look at calls for papers
-save M's dissertation bibliography
-cook
-clean
-make tea
-bathe
-write all kinds of abstracts
-love

I can feel myself on the verge of having something to actually write. It is making me both cranky and excited. I am snappish and distracted. I want company but am finding it difficult to be nice. Sigh. I am procrastinating because I am intimidated by this whole thing. How was Alice so brave with her mirror?

how was this not completely obvious?

readers have noted that the women in "The Woman Destroyed" are 'inauthentic' and 'suffer from bad faith.'

Ok, so they've gotten the whole Sartrean thing down.

But despair, people! It's about despair!

This is Kierkegaard with a capital what-the-f***!

There can be no loving relationship without a self. No love that doesn't go through a third.

that's it, class. go home, reread it all and come back prepared to participate in class discussion.

arriving again where i started

Oh beautiful, beautiful, beautiful world!

So much work! So much to do!

[and none of it relevant (relevant? to what?)]

what i thought i loved is not what i thought it was at all. and it is now far, far more wonderful. and difficult!

i love winterson's writing for itself. but now i am very aware of the superficiality of my reading. to really understand, to really scrape the tenderest meanings from each leaf, to really explore the stacked and stacked - solid and teetering - layers of meaning, i must now read Woolf, Eliot, Joyce, Stein. And some others. Where is the time?!

Sexing the Cherry is a reading of "Four Quartets"? Lighthousekeeping requires Woolf?

It's like my whole world just fell apart - but kaleidoscoped - and the broken beauty is more beautiful than the thin wholes I thought I had.