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.

career day

increasingly i wonder whether i want to remake the world. of course, then i wonder if i am simply afraid/intimidated/self-defeating.
looking at names, at academic heroes, i wonder - do i want that? is it important to have a c.v. as tall as i am?
this is very quick - i must leave in about 7 minutes for my volunteering position.

but it may be that i want a 'smaller' life.
one in which i might garden and make soap and work in a well-woman's clinic and volunteer and be a part of intimate, connected community.

this is not to say that academia and community cannot be combined. but i don't want to be so married to productivity that i forget to love well. or worse, that i never learn.

back to my first statement. i know that i cannot remake the world. but i can love a handful of people (or learn to. learn to). and that seems like it might even be the more challenging project - to forge community. (not in a retreating way, hiding from the world. that would be safe and easy and would result in death. but in an open, free, growing, move-ing way. i am not making sense)

ok. that's all. oh and no worries that i'm not going to finish this degree. this is simply another musing on how i can use it when i'm done; on what kind of person i want to be when i grow up; on how to best combine philosophy with love.

things i have not done

- finished the brennan proposal
- finished The Idiot
- begun work on the chapter taken from Diana's book
- dishes
- found a good brown cardigan that can be dressed up or down according to occasion
- chosen a dissertation topic
- gone to the gym today
- cleaned the litter box

things i have done:
- made soup
- laundry
- grocery shopping
- taken my vitamins
- ordered an IUD
- cut my hair
- started The Idiot
- started the Tractatus
- ordered Candide
- called my mother
- printed a whole lot of articles
- sent in some freewriting.

on balance, it could be worse

tasting notes

first - many thanks to everyone who contributed to my wonderful birthday, whether consciously or not!
- i have a week 'off' from many of my assistantship duties
- i got free dessert *twice* in one day
- a wonderful group of generous friends gathered to celebrate me
- i had the privilege and pleasure of waking up to the nicest birthday greeting
- i was remembered and acknowledged by such a number of people ...

i am quite fortunate and feel very loved. so thank you.

but how do i love all of you in return? of course, one of the things we do to those with whom we are intimate is we disappoint them. the better we know someone, the better we esteem them, the more they can disappoint us (and we them). sometimes that disappointment can feel very much like a loss of intimacy - 'Not know me yet?' and it seems that we must have been completely mistaken.
and so it may be that handling disappointment might be my new olives - learning to endure, and then enjoy, the flavor, tasting disappointment on my tongue and knowing it to be a pungent part of closeness